Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is kicking off the year with news of coming content and more changes. Executive Producer Jeff Hickman today posted his first State of the Game update for 2013 to discuss what players can expect to see in the coming months for SWTOR. In short, Hickman notes that players should see some changes to a certain “special PvP area” in 1.7, new elder game content by way of Flashpoints and Operations, new PvP areas, and world PvP options.

We have not forgotten Ilum! I think you will see (fairly soon) the answer to this question in the game itself - something big is coming to the Western Ice Shelf, but it’s quite a departure from what was there before. As for pure Open World PvP…well, that’s a more difficult proposition. We are dedicated to providing excellent PvP experiences to our players, but we intend to focus our energy on PvP Seasons and new Warzones. We will be experimenting with a different approach to Open World PvP, something that encourages organic PvP in contested areas in a new and interesting way, but do not look for massive new Open World PvP this year (outside of what I mentioned above). It is still on our design wall, but is taking a back seat to other forms of PvP.

Additionally, Hickman touched on the long-promised option of same gender romances. While Hickman reaffirmed that BioWare was supportive of the option, he explained that it may take some time still before it is ready but confirmed that it will be in the expansion. Unfortunately for players that were hoping to woo their companion characters, this option will be a bit more restricted.

Topic #4: Same Gender Romance: Any news on this front would be great… Answer: First of all, I want to apologize that this is taking so long to get in the game. I realize that we promised SGR to you guys and that many of you believed that this would be with a companion character. Unfortunately, this will take a lot more work than we realized at the time and it (like some other pieces of content we talked about earlier in the year) has been delayed as we focused on the changes required to take the game Free-to-Play. As we have said in the past, allowing same gender romance is something we are very supportive of.

Secondly, I want to reveal today that we are adding SGR with some NPCs on Makeb and do intend on pursuing more SGR options in the future. More details to come!

Source: SWTOR State of the Game