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SWTOR Guild Summit: Roleplaying

March 6, 2012 by

Daniel Erickson on Roleplaying. Meaning “Make your own fun tools”

The details disclosed:

– chat bubbles coming – have worked out technical issues from beta
– more orange gear with viability at end-game
– “wear what you want, when you want”
– server-wide limited time events coming
– improved spawning tech and better population of areas with NPCs
– more moving parts everywhere
– more chairs to sit in

Q&A

– different mounts: definitely on the list
– current limitations on wearing specific armour types: much more cosmetic gear on the way able to be worn by everyone
– player wants a male slave outfit: it’s coming (with lots of audience laughter)
– stricter naming policies: Star Wars canon has all sorts of ridiculous names so hard to police but hoping to implement more nameplate display customisations
– legacy family tree not restricted to family – can be allies / other toons of different species etc
– we want to attach other players to your legacy, but a lot of work to work out how to do it
– audio emotes taken from cinematics: yes more on the way that will contain lines
– companions in taxis and ability to name companions: original design did have companions in taxis but got too difficult with different companions. No answer on making companions.
– option to remove a companion from a story: debated a long time on this pre-launch but no. Mainly because killing companions was fun and the need for a companion through levelling make it a problem. “Not a route we’re going to go back down”
– bio / profile in character sheet to help with roleplaying:
– two seater mounts for co-op RP: “way down the road”

Filed Under: From the internets!

Communication between factions on the horizon

March 4, 2012 by

Georg Zoeller has posted a short but very interesting comment in a discussion on inter-factional emails. He alludes to the fact that BioWare are working on lifting the current restriction within SWTOR.

That opens up a bunch of interesting debates and the thread shows off some of them. There are those who say inter-faction communication goes pretty much against Star Wars lore.

Others see it as a great opportunity to increase trade.

I’m not usually a purist by any means in regards to lore, and I’m always up for any game functionality that makes it easier to play, but for some reason I support the idea of keeping the factions separated.

How do you see it?

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:

The SWTOR effect? Blizzard lays off 600 staff

March 2, 2012 by

Over at VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi an interesting story on Blizzard Software cutting its workforce by around 600. SWTOR is cited as one impact, as is the life cycle of a long-standing MMO like World of Warcraft:

The cuts are believed to focus on the company’s community service department. World of Warcraft, the company’s flagship game, has seen its subscriber numbers fall from 12 million subscribers in 2010 to 10.2 million in the last quarter.

Atul Bagga, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets, said in a note that the cuts were probably 20 to 30 percent of the company’s customer service staff. He said the headcount reduction is likely linked to the downward slope of World of Warcraft usage. He believes that WoW’s subscriber base will fall 300,000 to 400,000 users in the current quarter, due to churn and tougher competition from titles such as Star Wars: The Old Republic.

For what it’s worth, I don’t buy the line that SWTOR is having that much of an impact – at least yet. The life cycle issue is the much more pertinent one. At yesterday’s Australia/New Zealand launch, I heard a gaming journalist behind me say to the colleague next to him that he was underwhelmed by SWTOR because of it’s graphics – why would he play this when he has (insert latest console FPS) at home with its stunning graphics. He then went onto say it was the same reason he avoided WoW back in the time of Burning Crusade.

It’s a stark reminder of how old WoW is, and that has to be impacting subscriber numbers. Add up-and-comers like SWTOR and other MMOs on the horizon such as Guild Wars 2 and you can see there’s probably a downward trajectory for WoW. Not a terminal trajectory by any stretch however – even if SWTOR does pick up a few million more players.

Over to you: is SWTOR responsible to any great extent for the pain of layoffs over at Blizzard?

[Thanks to David K for the heads-up!]

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:

Suggestion Box: One Bug Fix

March 2, 2012 by

It’s been arguably the biggest week ever for local SWTOR players, what with local servers and a (relatively low key) local launch. So I thought we might take a break from that area and look at the game more widely.

Here’s the question: if you could control what the next thing BioWare fixed in the game, what would it be? It might be content, an add-on or a bug that drives you mad. Spill your guts in the comments!

Filed Under: News, Suggestion Box

Asia-Pacific SWTOR Players: Post Your Ping

February 29, 2012 by

The local servers are live and from hanging out in general chat on the PvE server Dalborra, the bulk of people are more than happy with their ping times compared to US servers.

Although ping times can be impacted by dozens of different things, I thought it’d still be interesting to get people to post their ping times, particularly those outside of NSW/Victoria in Australia.

We’d particularly love to hear from any Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesian, Japanese or Malaysian players on whether the Asia-Pacific servers are any better for you. Please post your ping and geographical location in comments!

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:

Fleet Pass: SWTOR weekly roundup

February 26, 2012 by

Time to introduce our third new member of the TOROZ team this week: Tim Gow – welcome!

Fleet Pass is a weekly review of the SWTOR community, a small and non-comprehensive collection of the funny, the insightful, the controversial and any other interesting picks found anywhere but generally in the SWTOR Forums.  Have a suggestion?  Send it in to us with a source link if available, and the name you’d like to be credited with.

Warning:  Article may or may not contain spoilers relating to SWTOR, or any of its variants.

Threads

Ashes_Arizona – SWTOR Roleplay Sub-Forum:

Formal Apology to the Galactic Republic

It has come to our attention that in the years following the sacking of Coruscant that you have had struggles and economic disturbances which have put great strain on the once great Galactic Republic and as such a massive issue with population migration and overall strains on your operational capability are evident.
…
It is with our sincerest apologies that we must say the heroes and combatants of your glorious Republic just, simply, are not cool, in any way. They are, unfortunately, so not cool, that to be any less cool they would become cool for being so uncool. This is not something we have any direct control over, and if we did, Imperial Intelligence would already be hard at work behind the scenes on many Republic worlds, doing our best to make your heroes cooler, simply because fighting badly dressed, ill trained, cliche spouting stereo-types is a horrible waste of the time of our Empire’s best and brightest, who are, without a doubt, far cooler than any cream of the crop the Republic appears to be able to offer.

AGSThomas – SWTOR General Discussion Sub-Forum:

My server’s population went from heavy to light within one month

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that there are less and less people online during peak hours. Rwookrorro is an eastern server and we peak around 8 and 9 pm. Over the weekend I hadn’t noticed more then 45 people on the fleet. People from my guild have not signed as much too. People that were playing 3 or 4 times a week now play once or twice.
…
This was sorely disappointing, not in a QQ kinda way, but all I wanted to do was play the game and I couldn’t because my server is dying/dead. I sat there contemplating what to do next when I realized my pvp queue still hadnt popped! I disbanded the “group”, logged off and watched TV for the rest of the night.

Elexier – SWTOR Story & Lore Subforum:

Same gender relationships clarifications?

There will not be a quote on this one.  It’s just an incredibly interesting discussion that has become a mainstay of the S&L Subforum.

 

Quotes

Back & Forth – SWTOR Story & Lore Subforum:

Once you marry your companion that’s it?

Haiken

Tittle says it all, after you marry your companion, in my case Nadia Grell, thats it?, she doesn’t talk to me ever again?

Lasmith

Yeah, sounds like marriage to me!

Anagnostics – SWTOR Roleplay Subforum:

To Sith

[Dirty Kick]

From your everyday smuggler

 

Explosive_Lasers – SWTOR Story & Lore Subforum:

The Empire is a totalitarian government that endorses slavery, noble houses, and reveres the Force-users among them. They are generally very harsh, unforgiving, and ruthless. They are also fairly racist, and hold much more respect for Purebloods and Humans. While they aren’t all Dark or Evil, many may be considered as such, because the Sith tend to interpret their Code as endorsing anger and hatred, which lead to the Darkside. The citizens and soldiers that aren’t Force-sensitive are subservient to the Sith, so generally follow their lead.

The Republic is a democratic-republic, with elected representatives for each planet under its rule. Equality is endorsed, and slavery is mostly illegal. The Force-users among the Republic are trained to be disciplined and act more as guardians or servants, instead of rulers. Most of the races are treated equally, but humans are still slightly better off, in many cases. While they may seem Light or Good, corruption, greed, and other darker aspects live in the Republic. The Jedi are generally trained to be leaders, while serving the greater good of the galaxy, the Order, or the Republic.

So, neither side is Darkside or Lightside, just like Light and Dark are not always black and white in the sense of morality. The Empire and Republic have vastly different governments and regulations, just like the Jedi and Sith are far different than Light/Dark.

 

Other Stuff

Brisk – Brisk Youtube Channel

 

Unknown – Gamers Lobby UK Youtube Channel

Filed Under: Community, From the internets!, News Tagged With:

Suggestion Box: Seasonal Events in SWTOR

February 24, 2012 by

If you’re in Australia you’re likely to hear nothing but debates over the leadership of the Government. So you can either run for parliament yourself or join the more interesting debate right here.

The question this week is on seasonal or one-off in-game events. BioWare haven’t ruled out having such events, so why not suggest your own event that you’d like to see in SWTOR.

I personally would like to see Cushion Appreciation Week. Imagine an arena PvP event with a couple of hundred C2-N2s battling it out – you know it makes sense.

Over to you!

Filed Under: News, Suggestion Box Tagged With:

Suggestion Box: Oceanic launch event

February 17, 2012 by

In what’s been a week of locally-focussed SWTOR love, I thought it’d be worth indulging in some hypothetical fun.

Let’s say BioWare decided to have a public launch event in Australia and New Zealand. What would be a truly local SWTOR launch that’d make the rest of the world sit up and take notice? I personally think a SWTOR B&S ball would have kicked arse, but I’m sure you can be more creative than that.

Jump in and maybe EA might take notice!

Filed Under: Community, Suggestion Box Tagged With:

The LFG debate and the immersion myth

February 16, 2012 by

Over the past week, one of the most fascinating debates I’ve seen raging is partly due to a comment made by BioWare’s Stephen Reid during our podcast Q&A last Saturday. It was a response to a question by our own Simon asking about plans for a Looking for Group (LFG) tool in SWTOR to make it easier to find groups for Flashpoints.

Stephen’s response (summarised here) was a more than reasonable statement that BioWare are looking at a cross-server LFG tool for Flashpoints. When he said it, my first reaction was “Ok cool, that’ll actually mean I get some Flashpoints played through”.

It seems that a cohort of SWTOR players vehemently disagree with an LFG tool however. The common theme from those opposed seems to be that it decreases the social aspect of the game because you don’t need to make the effort to find groups of people to play with. A tiny part of me sees their point, but not enough to give that view much credence. Like most people I don’t get enough time to play as much SWTOR as I’d like. So for me, an LFG tool is a godsend as it allows me to maximise my playing time.

As I’ve droned on about a few times, I’ve been a WoW player for a bunch of years and I’ve witnessed the transition there, from no LFG tool to it being in place. Unlike some of the current naysayers claiming it killed WoW, I witnessed nothing of the sort. Sure, your chance of ending up in a disastrous group may increase, but I actually found I was more likely to get a heroic dungeon completed in WoW in an LFG group than in my guild or trawling trade chat.

One final point: I totally don’t buy the immersion argument against LFG. Given that the Flash Points have an established storyline, how does the group formation being automatically chosen have any impact on the immersion? You’re already needing to suspend disbelief for the storyline – whether it’s a person you personally know or a stranger fighting next to you, you need to be involved with the story primarily. There’s also another bloody obvious point: you can still put together your own groups either within a guild or with friends. Yes, it may be harder with more people happy to have LFG do it for them, but then that just means your group will be even more special when you finally get them on board (insert rolling of eyes here).

So over to you: are you looking forward to an LFG tool being implemented in SWTOR? If not, why not?

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:

SWTOR’s local launch: your questions answered

February 16, 2012 by

What a day – after such a long wait for the details, we pretty much know most things about what life will be like post March 1 as SWTOR players. Although there’s no shortage of information around, I thought it might be worth rounding up the key facts:

1. March 1st is launch day – 12.01am to be exact.

2. Oceanic servers, located in Australia, go live at exactly the same time.

3. There’ll be optional free transfers to the new servers for anyone meeting these criteria:

To qualify for free character transfers, players must meet the following requirements by Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 5:01PM EDT, 7:01PM NZDT, 2:01PM HKT, 2:01PM SGT:

You specified that your country is Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, or Singapore during your account registration process.

Redeemed an Official Game Production Registration Code on www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com Code Redemption Center.

Have had or currently have entered a valid recurring payment method or redeemed a Pre-Paid Game Time Code.

Only characters created on The Old Republic servers by February 28, 2012, 5:01PM EDT, 7:01PM NZDT, 2:01PM HKT, 2:01PM SGT qualify for transfers.

4. Whole guilds can’t transfer: each person needs to do it individually and then re-form the guild after the transfer. Some people are talking about getting their guildies to change their account details to show Australia as their country of origin in order to allow international guilds to transfer. I’d be surprised if that works really.

5. The game will have a recommended retail of AU $79.99 or NZ $89.99. Yes, that’s a bit more expensive than buying from overseas and yes it’s more expensive than a lot of the copies currently in store locally – which is why any recommended price can be taken with a grain of salt. Expect easy local availability for cheaper prices than the RRP. The digital deluxe edition will cost you an extra $10. There’s no local Collector’s Edition available unfortunately.

6. Monthly subscriptions can be paid with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Paypal. The same goes if you buy the digital edition. Subs are billed in US dollars and will cost:

1 Month Subscription (automatically billed every 30 days): $14.99 USD per month
3 Month Subscription (automatically billed every 90 days): $13.99 USD per month (one-time charge of $41.97 USD)
6 Month Subscription (automatically billed every 180 days): $12.99 USD per month (one-time charge of $77.94 USD)

7. There will be PvE, PvP and RP-PvE local servers – no RP-PvP at this stage.

You can of course read the full FAQ here

For what it’s worth, I think it’s a pretty comprehensive set up for local players. Sure, we weren’t part of the initially launch (officially at least), but having local servers is a pretty good indication of the future of the game locally. At least we hope so.

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: ,

New poll: oceanic server or not?

February 14, 2012 by

With the official local launch for SWTOR getting very close and the announcement of local servers, we thought it was time to start a new poll.

The question is: will you swap to the local server when it’s available? It may seem a no-brainer but I’m guessing quite a few people actually won’t shift given they may have lots of US friends as players or are part of a international guild.

So go to our front page and vote in the poll which is on the right hand side of the page a little way down. Also – make your thoughts below, particularly if you aren’t going to be swapping – why aren’t you?

If you’d like to see the results of previous polls, here’s where you go.

Filed Under: News, Opinion

Guild Starships: where’s Spaceball 1?

February 10, 2012 by

Not what I want, but it would do...

Starships.

 

It wouldn’t be Star Wars without starships. In every single movie, from the original A New Hope in 1977 until Revenge of the Sith in 2005, the movie opens with spacecraft. The battle between the Imperial Star Destroyer Devastator and the Tantive IV in Star Wars: A New Hope was one of the most iconic scenes ever done for a movie.  The opening scene from Spaceballs was also iconic, if for VERY different reasons. Indeed, I doubt there was much that Spaceball 1 ever gave way for. But we are not here to steal air – we are here to play The Old Republic.

Many things have been written about the starships in The Old Republic. From the BT-7 to the Defender and the XS on the Republic side to the Mantis, the Fury and the Phantom on the Empire side, all are epic Star Wars goodness. Many people dislike the ‘on rails’ type of space combat, but as an adjunct to the ground game, it works fairly well most of the time. And come on, who DOESN’T enjoy blowing enemy fighters out of the sky, no matter their affiliation? But like all gamers, we want more.

One thing that many people have been asking for recently has been more guild related items. Guild banks are coming but many other games have guild halls. These structures serve as meeting places, decoration, and last but certainly not least, ways to flaunt how many people and resources guilds have. We are all human, right? We all want to flaunt what we have.

So, why NOT capital class starships as guild halls? We have all seen the Star Destroyer and Republic battleship designs from The Old Republic by now. Both designs would work as large scale trophy type things. Star Wars Galaxies had customizable guild halls. Many other MMOs did as well – City of Heroes comes to mind for extreme guild hall customisation. But how could we make it work? Starships are not small. Starships that would serve as a means of flaunting the guild would be even larger than the personal transports that are in game now.

What would we want? Do we want starships the same as the Empire and Republic have now? The frigates such as the Black Talon or Esseles and the cruisers such as the Overlord or Gav Daragon? Do we want something different? Would it be enough to have them or would we have to be able to make them stand out? If someone wants a rainbow colored Star Destroyer –gag me, but someone asked for it. I HOPE he was joking, but can they get it?

One idea for such things, IF Bioware does manage to get them up, would be to set player fleets across the galaxy. That way, Republic and Empire ships can be in similar places, visible to show off the guild’s ill or righteously gotten gains. Would we be able to build them, or would we have to buy them? I think a mix of the two. Buy the hull and build components. Armstech can build weapons for them, Armormech can build starship hull plating, Cybertech can build other pieces. I can think of all sorts of things you can build for large scale starships in a game. Heavy turbolasers, multiple launch missile systems with tracking, ECM pods, point defense weapons… The list goes on and on. Engines, hull, support systems, internal defenses… Wait a sec…

One cool thing that I personally never got a chance to try in City of Heroes was raiding opposing player headquarters. So, what if some rival guild comes along, finds your starship in whatever it is hidden –if it is not instanced that is- and tries to board it? Do you have epic scale PvP boarding actions? Or would that be too complex for this game as it is?

On that note, what would you want for a guild starship? Obviously something larger than the Millenium Falcon. What about something the size of the Tantive IV? I know everyone is going to say a Star Destroyer, but do you have ANY idea the fuel costs for something that size? Let alone the insurance costs…

Oh I can just see it.

Insurance agent: You want to insure WHAT? Against starfighter attack? Oooookaaaay….

In conclusion, I would love to have guild capital ships in the game at some point, but I have no idea how they would manage it. And I DO want Spaceball 1 as my own personal ride.

[Image from http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Destroyer]

 

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With:
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