SWTOR Current Lore Timeline by Charles Boyd

Charles Boyd, the Creative Director of Star Wars: The Old Republic has made an indepth forum post about the timeline of the Old Republic, in an attempt to answer the question “What year are we currently in?” as of the Onslaught expansion. Here’s his thoughts as well as his followups afterwards. If you are looking for a timeline for before the expansions, this TOR Community Timeline is fantastic.

Original Post

Follow Up #1

Love the discussion so far! Some quick responses:

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

• Prologue / Chapter 1 begins in late 10 ATC and concludes in late 11 ATC
• Chapter 2 begins in late 11 ATC and concludes in late 12 ATC
• Chapter 3 begins in late 12 ATC and concludes in late 13 ATC

Is that about right? That one year is really the only thing that confuses me in terms of the timeline.

That’s how I’m parsing it, yep! Though I’d want to emphasize that I see that as a general timeline for all of the class stories collectively, and not as a written-in-stone interpretation of each and every one specifically. What I mean by that is some chapters of some class stories definitely wouldn’t have taken exactly 1 year; some perhaps a bit more, others significantly less. Since I didn’t write them all, I’m loathe to go back and assign more specific timing to them unless something comes up that requires that specificity. But if we look at them as a collective group of stories, it seems reasonable to say that they all generally start and end around the same time.

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

This is about Darth Savik saying she hasn’t risked open combat in a decade, right? Charles has said on Twitter once or twice that this was not meant to be taken literally. It’s meant to be taken as “in about a decade” .

Right – she says the last time she fought anyone directly was a decade ago, which isn’t the same thing as saying the last time she fought the player was exactly ten years ago 

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

The way I understood it, Kira and Scourge destroyed Vitiate’s body at about the same time of KOTET Chapter 9 taking place. After that, they got knocked out for “more than a year”. This would still not necessarily have to mean that they immediately went to Odessen after waking up.

Ben’s on a roll! That’s how it’s intended. Kira and Scourge didn’t immediately go to Odessen; and even when they did, they spent some time observing the player character (seen in Hearts and Minds) before making contact in Onslaught.

My copy of Annihilation is stuck in the office, so I don’t have it handy to refer to. But if there is a conflict between that and the encyclopedia with regard to dates, I’d go with the encyclopedia’s version, because:

• They were published very close together, so if there are any conflicts, they were likely just a result of miscommunication or simple typos, not an intentional clarification/revision.
• The encyclopedia was written specifically to serve as a reference for details like this; Annihilation is written to be an awesome story first and foremost (seriously, read it if you haven’t, it’s great!) with dates serving as extra detail.
• Drew Karpyshyn is way too nice and talented and successful, and clearly needs to be taken down a peg or two if the opportunity presents itself 
• Drew’s tweet about Annihilation following the class stories in 3640 BBY fits with the encyclopedia putting Ilum in that year, so that already lines up.

As one last point of extra clarification with regard to the in-game releases roughly following IRL time – I really do mean roughly. So everything released in the same IRL year is generally meant to have happened in the same in-game year, almost always in the order they were released. But just because one patch was released in April and another was in July, doesn’t mean that the events they depict are exactly 3 months apart. There is plenty of room for interpretation based on what’s actually happening in each story 

Quote: Originally Posted by Ylliarus 

everything aligns perfectly with the lore 

The highest possible praise  Thanks!

Really enjoying the conversations, please keep your thoughts coming!

Follow Up #2

Some more quick answers here, but it looks like folks are generally feeling good with what we’ve put together – we’ll stick with this going forward and look for opportunities to present it more “formally” sometime down the road. Huge thanks to all of you for joining in the discussion!

Quote: Originally Posted by MrEndymion 

Question for the story team as well, at the current point that in-game lore is at, what age would you say the 8 classes are, if you had to guess?

I don’t like to give any “canon” age for the player characters; that should be left up to the player themselves as much as possible IMO 

Quote: Originally Posted by LtGeneralGezlin 

Are the ages for the companions as stated in the Encyclopedia their ages at the time we meet them in game (For example, is Risha 21 when we meet her in the Prologue?) or their ages around the time of 13 ATC/ 3640 BBY?

Oof… I’m actually not sure what everyone’s intent was when we put that together. There were numerous authors on the encyclopedia, and all class writers were consulted, but I forget if we made this specific distinction when presenting the information.

Giving it a quick look, I’m going to say that the companion ages in the encyclopedia are probably intended as their ages when they’re recruited, not at 13 ATC. For example, I don’t think Kira is intended to be younger than Nadia, but Nadia is listed in the encyclopedia as 22 while Kira is listed as 20.

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

We can make it relatively simple: is Annihilation / Battle of Duro supposed to be set the same year as Ilum, or the year after?

Since Drew said pretty explicitly that he intended it for 13 ATC, I’d prefer not to override that if there isn’t some glaring conflict to resolve (it doesn’t seem like it currently). I can’t recall – do any characters in Annihilation mention Malgus’s uprising?

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

My main problem with all this is that it would mean that the Alliance takes down the Eternal Empire in the same year that it was established, which just rubs me the wrong way.

I’ve seen people here and elsewhere saying that it feels wrong in both directions – some, like you, feel it’s too fast; others feel like it couldn’t possibly take that long based on how the chapters themselves feel. I suspect the timing here will never please everyone, but in your specific case I would personally look to the fact that the Alliance is made up of staggeringly powerful and skilled people who (until it was formed) were unable to combine their efforts. Once they could, it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to me that things took a turn within a year, IMO.

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

is there an IRL month that corresponds to the change in a year in the game?

Again, for simplicity’s sake, I use the IRL year rollover (December->January) to mark the in-game year rollover. I admit this is arbitrary, but IMO it’s just one more area where the vagueness of time in Star Wars doesn’t actually hold up to scrutiny because it was never meant to. What month was the Treaty of Coruscant signed? Was it coincidentally the same exact month as the Battle of Yavin, thousands of years later? Wouldn’t there be times where Event A could be in 13 ATC, and Event B is in 14 ATC, but they’re both in 3640 BBY? Or vice versa?

That way lies madness, so let’s just all pretend Malgus was crashing the Jedi’s new year’s party in Deceived and not dig any deeper into this hole 

Quote: Originally Posted by Ylliarus 

Would it be possible that the Sith Empire used a different dating system, one that is still recent but more geared towards the Empire’s priorities and values?

I think that would totally make sense, but I’d personally prefer not to introduce even more complexity into all of this. Furthermore, a new calendar system would constitute new lore, and therefore be something to discuss with our LFL partners; it’s not something I could simply declare in a forum post. So I wholeheartedly support roleplayers using that idea, but I can’t make it an official “thing” at this time 

And as long as I’m here, there were a few questions that aren’t really on the topic of the thread, but I’ll indulge real quick 

Quote: Originally Posted by LtGeneralGezlin 

What is the relation between our HK-51 and the HK-50s and HK-51s from Knights of the Old Republic II, and where does HK-55 fit into that line? Is he a repurposed and modified HK-51 built specifically for Lana, or is he a one of a kind creation by the Empire after we recovered HK-51 from Section X?

I was under the impression that HK-51 was only in deleted content for KOTOR II? As for HK-55, our intent was that he’s his own new and improved model created by the Empire, but only produced in very limited quantities (which is why we haven’t run into any others yet).

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

You know, I would still like to know why you decided to “uplift” a character such as Savik, who had exactly one appearance and didn’t even speak back then.

I chose her precisely because she was unmemorable in her first appearance. I wanted a character that players were likely to have fought, but unlikely to remember, so that they could experience that feeling of having a huge impact on a character’s life without ever having considered it at the time.

Quote: Originally Posted by BenKatarn 

Regarding the role of Kira and Scourge in ending Vitiate, did they know about the Alliance at that point?

I’d hesitate to get into too much “official” detail on stuff like that, since leaving it open a bit leaves room for a cool short story or something in the future. But what you go on to suggest is more or less what’s in my head at the moment – they were focused on their own thing in obscure corners of the galaxy, and not all that connected to galactic events. But consider that unofficial for now.