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Flash Point 33: Nutless Monkeys and Lightwhips

May 28, 2012 by

This week we have an extra co-host, our own Tim Gow, who writes our weekly Fleet Pass column. Aside from some Diablo 3 tangents, we talk plenty of SWTOR, with 1.3 speculation and subscriber numbers not surprisingly dominating.

Points of discussion:
– Drop in subscriber numbers
– BioWare layoffs / Stephen Reid’s departure
– 1.3 conjecture
– Lore Update: Light Sabers!
– Random Diablo 3 chat
– Fleet Pass Column – what would you like to see from now on?
– Shout outs for our forums, Facebook page, Oceanic Guild listing, Google Plus page and Twitter account

Listen via iTunes or right here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:17 — 32.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Filed Under: News, Podcast Tagged With:

Community Q&A 25th May: SWTOR 1.3 Special

May 27, 2012 by

This week’s Community Q&A from BioWare is dedicated to 1.3. For mine, 1.3 has been covered pretty extensively and there doesn’t seem anything ground-breakingly new here, but it’s a great summary of some key areas around ranked Warzones, the LFG tool (which won’t be cross-server) and gear. Read the full Q&A below:

 

llesna: Can you please tell us why the upcoming Legacy additions for Game Update 1.3 are character-specific rather than Legacy-wide?

Daniel Erickson (Lead Game Designer): Legacy Perks have a different purpose than global unlocks and are specifically designed to enable players to customize each individual character. Since you may not care about Space XP or running the Bonus Series missions on one character it is important that you’re not paying a premium that is calculated at the expense of 8 or more characters all gaining this benefit. This also means the Legacy Perks will, as a rule, be more affordable than the global unlocks.

Ixum: Daniel Erickson said in his interview that there will be no new gear sets in Game Update 1.3. Does this mean there will not be any new orange gear as well?

Daniel: Although there are no new gear sets, the addition of Adaptive Gear opens up a range of new options for characters, especially those wearing medium and heavy armor. Now any of the social gear sets can be used by any class and they will automatically change stats to be the correct armor level. With the addition of the Augment Tables, players can additionally take that social gear and get Augment slots added that will make it competitive with any gear in the game—once the right mods and augments are gathered, of course.

Mindspore: Any update on Ranked Warzones in 1.3?

Daniel: Ranked Warzones is on track for 1.3. All the heavy lifting (ratings, group persistence exiting warzones, etc) is done and right now we are working through some emergent conflicts with Group Finder and the process of queuing for multiple activities at once with multiple temporary groups.

Mallorik: What is your philosophy on cross server LFG tools? Are we getting a same server tool just to hold us over while you work on cross server tech or is this just a test to see if a same server tool will do the job? 

Daniel: Although we’re certainly willing to entertain the idea of cross-server LFG tools if the need arises, it’s a last resort for us. We firmly believe for cooperative play it is important to have a community and social responsibility that you simply can’t have with players appearing and disappearing from your reality. Instead we are pushing hard on servers that are massive compared to the ones we launched with. Early tests show we’ll be able to raise the peak concurrent user cap above what it was at launch. Combining that with server transfers to enable players to move to these new servers and fill them to the brim, we should see some fantastic, vibrant communities develop where Group Finder will always be able to find someone for your content.

CompassRose: Many players are concerned about the upcoming character transfer feature. One question frequently being voiced in the forums is that of retaining their legacy surname. Is there a mechanic in the transfer feature that will notify a player if the destination server they choose already has their surname locked by another player?

Daniel: We’re not quite (almost!) ready to talk about the specifics but rest assured we are doing everything we can to make the process as easy and low-impact to the greatest majority of players as possible. We should have better specifics soon.

BlazingShadow: Will we see the return of our favorite droid HK in some form?

Daniel: The great thing about droids is that they can be rebuilt. Of course, HK-47 wasn’t the only HK model ever built…

Asturias: Are you guys looking to let players incorporate a Bio for each character so others can read it. I always loved how some MMOs had this option for others to read a quick Bio of my character that I created and I could read theirs.

Daniel: Unfortunately because of our intricate mission systems we are carrying a massive amount of variables for each character already so we are forced to be a bit stingy with things like customizable text. That said, we’re already researching solutions for making this content lighter to drag around with each character and I’d love to see it. Nothing soon, though.

Ximix: Are there any plans to revisit ability animation issues between mirror classes? For example, several “instant” Sage abilities actually have 1-2 second activations while Sorcerer abilities activate and deal damage instantly. Just like the Commando vs Bounty Hunter animations, in PvP these discrepancies can be huge.

Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Whenever you use an “instant” ability, the server receives and process that action without any animation dependency (read: instantly), but the impact VFX and flytext are synced to the attack animation on your client. This is done to make the game look good and give attacks a sense of weight and impact without affecting timing or balance.

There are some notable exceptions to this that are real delays and real discrepancies that we’re aware of and are addressing. In the case of Shock and Project, there is a real delay (on the server) before Project deals its damage, and that’s something we’re fixing in 1.3. The other real delays that we’re aware of are in Smash and Force Sweep, but we don’t yet have a fix for those.

If you believe additional abilities have delays or are not mirrored, you’d have to point them out specifically. With the exception of the abilities I’ve already mentioned, so far our investigations have shown that the discrepancies being reported are the intentional ones that make the game look good and feel right and, to reiterate, do not impact timing or balance.

gabarooni: As a long time tank (nearly 10 years), I’ve come to the conclusion that holding Aggro is not fun. Tanks already have to watch their survivability, cooldowns, position mobs, watch their groups position and health, and fight the mobs—all of which I enjoy. Are there any plans in Game Update 1.3 to increase threat generation for tanks? Especially for Guardians and Juggernauts?

Austin: Actually, yes. We’ll have more detailed information for you soon, but you can expect some improvements in threat generation, AOE threat, and quality of life.

Hargan: Will the Commando Gunnery spec be rebalanced after the changes in Game Update 1.2 so that we are back on par with the DPS output of similarly geared Sages/Gunslingers/Sentinels in Operations?

Austin: I think I’ll confirm a lot of suspicions with this answer, but the bugfix that addressed Demolition Round scaling had a large enough impact on Gunnery DPS that it surprised us, too. Although Gunnery and Arsenal had been hitting our targets, it became harder to do so than we were comfortable with. Another way to say that is that the “low end” of our test results was hit too frequently by too many people. The changes you’re going to see are mostly in resource management and usability, which will make it easier for you to deliver the considerable damage you already wield. We’ll have more detailed information for you soon.

Brutalos: What class balances can we expect from Game Update 1.3 and will it undo some of the changes done in 1.2?

Austin: Game Update 1.2 brought damage dealing and healing roles closer to target than they had previously been. If for you and your class that meant a reduction in performance, that can be a hard thing for me to justify to you. I think it’s fair to say that some of those changes were made by reducing usability instead of just reducing numbers, and it’s these usability issues that we want to correct and negative changes to usability that we don’t want to repeat in the future. Like I said before, we’ll have more detailed information for you soon, but if I had to identify a motif for class changes in future updates, it’d be “improved usability.”

 

Supaaq: I am extremely excited to see a Group Finder being added to SWTOR in Game Update 1.3. I would say of all the features I wish the game could have ASAP, that definitely tops my list. What else can you tell us about the specific implementation of this most welcome improvement? Will it automatically teleport group members to the entrance when the group forms?

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): We are very, very close to releasing the full design of the feature in an imminent blog post written by yours truly. That being said, highlights do include that it can be used for flashpoints, heroic flashpoints, ops and planetary content. For the instanced combat, it will give you a free teleport to the content location once all group members agree to the group.

Gangawolf: I am curious about the cost of repairing gear, particularly in the end-game. When I die, I find that the cost to repair my Bounty Hunter’s gear is just under half what if costs my Jedi Consular (and they are similarly geared in terms of level of gear). Likewise, my Smuggler falls somewhere in between the two. Again, not a scientific sampling, but it seems like heavy armor sets are cheaper to repair than medium armor sets which in turn are cheaper than light armor sets. Why wouldn’t repair costs be the same across the board for similar level gear?

Jason Attard (Senior Game Balance Designer): Repair costs are tied to the percentage of durability your items have lost (in addition to item level and quality). Currently heavy armor has a higher durability score than medium or light armor, so it degrades more slowly in combat and it is thus cheaper to repair over time. This was put in place fairly early in development to give tanks a bit of a break on their repair costs (back before we had lightly-armored Shadow/Assassin tanks). With the introduction of Adaptive Armor in Game Update 1.3 this design decision is definitely getting dated, so there’s a good chance we will normalize the durability of all armor types in a future update.

tkinnunzero: In Game Update 1.3, can you briefly summarize what is the endgame Operation gear progression, i.e. what is the path a fresh level 50 is intended to be following that will see him/her eventually conquer the highest difficulties and end up fully decked in Best-in-Slot gear in every slot?

Jason: We expect a fresh level 50 character to start with a mixture of high level Premium and Prototype gear from missions, crafting and planetary commendations. For players interested in Group PvE end-game content the first step would be to use Group Finder to go through the Normal Mode Flashpoints until you acquire a full set of Prototype gear, probably mixed with several Artifact/Tionese items or mods. Next up would be hard mode Flashpoints (starting with tier 1 then moving on to the harder tier 2 Rakghoul Flashpoints) and story-mode Operations (starting with Eternity Vault then moving on to Karraga’s Palace) where you pick up your Columi/Energized gear. Finally you’d get into story mode Explosive Conflict to pick up your Rakata gear, and use the Black Hole commendations to start picking up Black Hole gear. To progress past this point you’ll need a guild at your back capable of doing Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode Operations. Starting into hard modes immediately after story mode Eternity Vault will let your dramatically accelerate your Columi and Rakata gearing, and Hard Mode Explosive Conflict lets you rapidly pick up Black Hole gear and is the only way to pick up the top-of-the-line Campaign gear set.

Once you have good gear that you feel you’re going to hold on to for a while you can improve it by adding Augments through crafting and Item Modification Tables. You can also optimize it by extracting mods from duplicate pieces of Operation gear to get the perfect balance of stats for your character build. Crafting also has a role to play, especially if your guild has a lot of extra Operation gear they can reverse engineer. It allows you to augment your gear more quickly and cheaply, customize the look of your gear, and help gear up your new guild-mates with powerful crafted mods and items.

If you enjoy solo content playing the daily mission hubs on Ilum, Belsavis and Corellia can help rack up the credits and accelerate your early end-game gear progression. The Galactic Trade Network provides opportunities to buy powerful mods and items with all those credits, while providing a decent income for the end-game crafters.

Our plan for future Operation game updates is to have Group Finder players to progress from Story mode to Story mode, while Operation guilds move into Hard Mode of the new operation (possibly dropping back into Story Mode to learn fight mechanics or gear up new players) then progress into Nightmare Mode. We intend to introduce Hard Mode and Nightmare Mode in the same update (Nightmare Explosive Conflict was delayed to allow us get some exciting new Nightmare Mode tech into the game which we should have more details on soon). We’re also planning on having Hard Mode Flashpoint rewards continue to progress as we introduce new tiers of content, allowing new players to skip past some of the earlier Operations (if their guild has already completed them and doesn’t wish to go back, for example).

Over to you: any info in here that’s new for you or got you excited?

Filed Under: Community, News Tagged With:

It’s About The Numbers: SWTOR and subscriptions

May 27, 2012 by

There's still subscribers in them there mountains!

Well, it’s a sunny day in the neighbourhood for doomsayers and whingers everywhere. The news of an undisclosed number of employees being laid off from Bioware Austin is seen by some as the latest nail in a coffin that certain people have been building out of thin air and speculation.

But does that mean they’re wrong? First, let’s go over what we actually know.

Employees have been laid off – some will be able to join other projects within EA in Austin (EA Sports also have a presence there).

Are the layoffs a sign of anything definitive? No. At least not according to Massively’s Larry Everitt who tweeted “oh well, it wouldn’t be an mmo without layoffs after launch”.

That there have been layoffs is almost predictable and sadly inevitable. In fact, mass layoffs aren’t unusual in the software industry in general. remember the 600 Blizzard employees let go from its worldwide workforce in February this year?

Daniel Eriksson was recently promoted, so that may be indicative of internal restructuring that’s been planned for some time although it’s equally possible EA’s growing financial issues and the 25% drop in active subs also prompted the shedding of staff.

That said, Stephen Reid, SWTOR’s Senior Community Manager, was one of the unlucky ones who are now charting a new employment adventure. I think we can all agree that wrangling the trolls and hysterics that populate the SWTOR forums probably needs more people, not less. Judging from his tweets it wasn’t his idea to go either. So what gives there? It’s odd.

As far as resourcing SWTOR in the future, Andrew Wong, an EA spokesman indicated that other studios, some overseas, will be involved in future work so that might indicate outsourcing or perhaps Bioware utilising assets within the greater EA family. Either way there’s no reason to think that the game will suffer in the short to medium term at this point.

Even so, the spectre of F2P still keeps getting pushed forward by many. This is almost always shouted down as being the certain kiss of death, but I’d suggest it’s a rather old way of looking at the MMORPG landscape. Without doubt, any F2P game of yesteryear would be a pale shadow of any premium sub-based AAA title, but it’s not the case any more. Consider, when SWToR was conceived four or so years ago the very idea of making it F2P was laughable. But the world has changed since then and it’s likely SWTOR’s subscription model is a fossil from a bygone age.

‘But WoW can do it successfully’ I hear someone in the back yelling. ‘So what?’ is my reply. Blizzard created something that is probably going to remain unique. People spend the money because they have invested so much time building a virtual life and community amidst a world of content that’s been build up over seven years. WoW has mass, WoW has momentum and it’s going to take a long time for that to wind down. SWTOR is losing mass and has lost much of it’s momentum, but that doesn’t mean its doomed.

SWTOR does need to evolve. Into what, I have no idea. But I am reminded of another game I waited eagerly for the release of. It got off to a rip roaring start but was buggy with missing features. Controls and combat needed major work and after the initial novelty wore off, the bitter, angry complaints started. After the second month it started losing subscribers. In fact it shed so many that it was rare to see another player. At all. Then came server merges and finally the dreaded move to Free2Play. ‘It’s the end of the game’, ‘We’ll be swamped with 8 year olds’. The sky was falling according to many, but it didn’t. Now DC Universe Online is doing just fine. As of November last year its revenues were up 700% from its old subscription based model. Its fourteenth DLC update is about to hit and will include returns from Adam Baldwin and Mark Hamill.

Does this mean SWToR should look at F2P. Not really. Not yet. The subscriptions would have to get down to 500k before the financial viability becomes questionable. Since many players will have taken out three or six month subs it’s the June figures that will give us a clear indication of how the games future looks. But even if they drop and the sub model fails, it’s not our last hope. There is another.

Filed Under: News, Opinion

Suggestion Box: Celebrating Star Wars’ 35th Birthday

May 25, 2012 by

In what has been a gloomy week for SWTOR, let’s try to get into a weekend frame of mind by talking milestones. In this case it’s the fact that 35 years ago on May 25th 1977, the first Star Wars film opened in US cinemas.

So, in that vein, this week’s discussion topic is the original Episode IV: A new Hope: tell us when you first saw it, where you saw it and the impact it had on you. Jump on in!

Filed Under: News, Suggestion Box Tagged With:

BioWare’s Stephen Reid: Adios

May 24, 2012 by

As we reported yesterday, BioWare have announced layoffs within the SWTOR. It’s been widely reported  (here’s a perspective from Austin Texas’ own newspaper), but one extra detail that’s come out is that Senior Community Coordinator Stephen Reid is one of those who has been laid off.

As a non-US site we had a little less contact with Stephen than some, but the contacts we did have were very productive and informative – our podcast discussion with him was wide-ranging and delivered a lot of great information including the acknowledgement of an LFG being in development.

All that said, he was (unfairly) a lightning rod for discontent throughout the lead-up to launch and in the weeks afterwards – and he appeared to take it all with good grace.

As we said yesterday, these things are never pleasant, but we wish Stephen the best in whatever comes next, we will miss trawling the Rockjaw Twitter account for snippets of info. And we’re also confident he’ll find the pic on this post appropriate!

As far as conjecture on what this means more widely – we still hold to the belief it’s a normal post-launch shakeout, as unpleasant as it is for those involved. There’s also some reportage that development may spread out to multiple studios:

With layoffs in the Austin team, it appears continued development on The Old Republic will involve multiple studios. In a comment to Shacknews, an EA representative told us that “BioWare Austin remains a large and important part of BioWare and EA, working with other studios around the world to continue to deliver a high-quality service and exciting new content for Star Wars: The Old Republic.”

It’s over to you: what say you on these recent developments?

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: ,

BioWare lay off SWTOR staff: is it the beginning of the end?

May 23, 2012 by

To answer this post’s title first up: no.

Most importantly, commiserations to those who have lost jobs – it’s never an easy thing for anyone having to adjust to a new reality, even if they’re lucky enough to have another job to go to.

The full announcement from BioWare’s founders:

Hey folks, since you’re reading this you may likely have heard that we’ve done some restructuring here on the SWTOR team. Sadly, we are bidding farewell to some talented, passionate and exceptionally hard-working people who helped make SWTOR a reality. Impacting people’s lives this way is always very hard, but we’re ensuring the affected people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.

Looking back at launch, we all came together and did something historic. We executed one of the largest, most successful and stable launches of any MMO yet in industry history. That is not an easy feat for any development team or company and we are humbled and honored by our fan community’s strong support both at launch and beyond.

Looking forward, the studio remains vibrant and passionate about our many upcoming initiatives for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We still have a very substantial development team working on supporting and growing the game, and we feel we are in a strong position, with your continued involvement and feedback, to continue to build Star Wars: The Old Republic as one of the most compelling and successful online experiences in the world today. There are many strong initiatives planned for cool new content and new features that we’re excited to tell you about in the upcoming weeks and months.

Rest assured that we remain dedicated to delivering a high quality service in SWTOR to you, our fans, and we will continue to support and grow Star Wars: The Old Republic over the weeks, months and years to come.

Thanks,
Greg and Ray

So, in regard to the layoffs and their implications for SWTOR, there’ll be no shortage of prognostications about how this is the beginning of the end. There’s one small flaw in that argument though: can anyone show me where an MMO development team maintains its full workforce post-launch? Surely no-one thinks that the huge team involved in getting SWTOR off the ground would all be kept ongoing?

Sure, there’s a massive amount of development of the game still to do, particularly given the proposed enhancements and the regular content updates that need to happen. Even then, I would have thought ongoing efforts require a smaller team now that development processes post-launch would be well and truly bedded down.

Again, it’s a hard time for those affected, but let’s not mix up respect for that with an assumption of more ominous undercurrents.

Over to you: do you see this announcement as a natural part of the process or am I being a BioWare apologist?

Filed Under: News, Opinion Tagged With: ,

The Assassin Tank

May 23, 2012 by

This is a guest post from Xterminatz over at Xterminatz Gaming. Enjoy!

Ever since SWTOR has been released I’ve been playing multiple roles and characters at the high end-game level. My primary role is Ranged DPS on my Sith Sorceror however I do play other roles such as Assassin Tank and Bounty Hunter Healer during the alt/casual runs to give other non-hardcore players opportunity to see end-game.

Midian was in the race for Warlord Kephess Oceanic First kill several weeks ago however we choked horribly to say the least and there was some major changes that needed to happen if the guild was going to stay together especially with Diablo 3 coming soon.

Prior to last week we had a good few weeks of wiping on Warlord Kephess and being the GM sitting in a leadership role you can’t help but feel that It’s your fault the guild is not progressing as well as the amount of responsibility that’s on your shoulders as a leader.

You ask yourself how do I fix this?

We killed Colonel Vorgath before the 01/05 reset and had at least a few attempts on Kephess, but the problem didn’t start happening until 03/05 and from there it was just constant wipes. The raid would progress and manage to get to the transition phase at 58% majority of the time but once below that all hell broke loose.

Once you pass the transition phase sucessfully and you reach below 58% It’s no longer the “main” responsibility of the DPS or Healers for what happens next. Watching other videos and guilds killing on live stream the tanks play the vital role in the end it all comes down to positioning, timing and kiting Kephess correctly with the final mechanics of the fight and this is what we struggled with.

After watching our tanks a few times it was clear that they didn’t have a real understanding of how these mechanics worked or what exactly they had to do for the final phase, we had them watch multiple videos and we discussed endlessly the different ways to approach it but none of them worked.

What to do now?

So after 6 raiding nights of wiping as the GM and the leader I made the decision to stop 16HM raiding on Sunday 13/05 as players started to burn out and people just didn’t want to turn up for progression anymore. From a DPS/Healer point of view you can point the finger endlessly at the tank but until you’re actually playing a tank you don’t understand what’s happening in the raid.

The following night Monday 14/05 I decided we would do 8HM instead and bring our best players from the team, I also switched to play my assassin tank so I could feel and see what our tanks were doing, it allowed me to have a 1-to-1 perspective to see if it was the tanks having the problem or maybe just the strat we where using.

First problem; Positioning – After the transition phase we found that the positioning used for Kephess was slightly incorrect and we saw within a few attempts DPS/Heals would get gimped because Kephess or the raid was in the wrong spot and he would cleave (arcing slash) players.

When you enter Kephess room you’ll notice 3 doors/gates one to the left, one to the right facing Kephess and obviously the third is the one you entered the room via. We positioned Kephess at the right door/gate and had the raid DPS/Heals stack at the entry gate to maximize the distance for any possible issues we would encounter, we also had a specific tank on Kephess for the transition phase.

The offtank (myself) who was not tanking in the transition phase positioned himself at the boxes to the left entry door so that when Kephess finished the transition he would immediately taunt, then get knocked back to start dropping purple circles and the original tank would pickup again and continue tanking as normal.

We did this a few times and it worked great!

Second problem; Timing and Kiting – We found our first problem and fixed it relatively quickly however the second problem now boiled down to timing of the tanks taunting at the correct times for BoTM (Breathe of The Masters) and being able to kite Kephess without getting hit by him, or getting knocked into a purple circle which would result into the tank getting one shot.

The key to this problem was communicaion between the tanks which we previously never saw in any of our 16HM attempts and I think this is one of the major key points that turned it around for us. After deciding we would kite Kephess clockwise starting from the boxes it all boiled down to the tanks communicating with each other and letting one another know when to taunt (as a verbal warning) for BoTM.

I’ll admit that when I was kiting Kephess I made a few bad decisions with the kite path and got myself knocked into the purple circles, tanks for this phase will always need to be on the ball.

The end result – make or break?

With all phases now sorted out it came down to the entire raid perfecting the execution of the strat and this is pretty much where exceptional gamers are either made, or broken and I can happily say that with the amount of time and effort we’ve put into Warlord Kephess we killed him 8HM re-assuring our players for 16HM.

Here’s the live stream unedited 8HM kill: http://www.twitch.tv/xterminatz/b/318875791

Following the reset our 16HM raid visited Warlord Kephess on Wednesday 16/05. We used the exact same strat as our 8HM kill and with much suprised we managed to kill Kephess & clear Explosive Conflict within one raiding night. Unfortunately I don’t have video/fraps recorded from my POV however I plan to have a 1080p HD video up soon from my tanking perspective to help with other guilds.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article It’s not easy being a top raiding guild but I thought I would share my experience as this was the birth of The Assassin Tank for me.

Thanks
Xterminatz


Filed Under: News, Opinion, Tanking

SWTOR 1.3: further details

May 22, 2012 by

In case you hadn’t heard the news, BioWare’s Daniel Erickson has taken part in an interview with IGN to discuss some details for the 1.3 update. It’s well worth a read, but if you’re a bit time short then have a look at this nice infographic created by Dulfy’s Healing Corner:

(Click on image for full size)

We’ll be discussing 1.3 in lots more detail in coming weeks, but for me, the group finder tool is the thing I’m most hanging for. What about you?

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

Server Downtime and Podcast: None For This Week

May 21, 2012 by

In case you don’t get the memo, there’s no server maintenance this week. So enjoy some uninterrupted Tuesday night SWTOR playing. You know it makes sense!

Onto our very own Flash Point podcast, I owe you an apology for no episode this week. It’s purely due to my inability to get us all in the same room to record. That said, we’re on schedule to record this weekend, so expect Episode 33 to hit your feeds late Sunday or early Monday morning AEST.

Also, a big thanks to those who have rated the podcast on iTunes the past few weeks – it’s always appreciated!

Filed Under: News, Servers

Fleet Pass: SWTOR Weekly Roundup

May 21, 2012 by

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

((Hello Bioware devs/forum moderators.  Glad to see you read TOROZ =P))
JoventhGonzalez – General Discussion
Weekly Forum Thread Round-Up Discussion: May 17th, 2012
Discuss this week’s Forum Thread Round-Up blog and nominate discussions for next week in this thread!

Swtor confusing. Bonus missions, heroics, flashpoints. I’m stressed. Suggestions ; )
I originally posted this on MMORPG.Com, about Bonus Missions and though it might be useful here.
I want to say ahead of time I think this game is amazing, and will keep getting better and better. This is probably
my biggest problem with the game, and with RPG’S in general and that’s why I posted it.

Cutting confusion/ organization is one major things that could help the game survive longer……..Please forgive me if I’m a little bit cynical/angry/bitter/mean. I’m really not this is just rooted out of the stress from playing the game deeply

Please, Please Read

(THE NEW MISSIONS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. PEOPLE (us) ARE NOT THE PROBLEM….)

THE
PROBLEM
IS
ORGANIZATION
AND
SIMPLIFICATION
OF
GAME
CONTENT.

Lets say you had to kill The Blob. Well that sould take forever, his Blobness is all over everything. He covers half your city. You don’t even know where to start.

That is how it feels to play SWTOR.

But what if The Blob and his trail of mess you had to kill was divided into sections? Maybe he had five kids, and wasn’t as big. Also you have an I-Phone app that locates each Blob Child ; ). Problem is with SWTOR….the “I-Phone” App is confusing and a little messy….

Here is how you eliminate The SWTOR Blob… (again no offense to creators, game is great)

Yoomazir – General Discussion

Will Bioware bring playable races that doesn’t look like colored humans?
I’ll be honest, I played Star Wars Galaxies for like 1 month (the game was like 10 bucks with 1 month free) and there was something I really enjoyed: Playing as an Ithorian bounty hunter.

So I started playing this game like 1 week ago and I was kinda disappointed to see that the only playables races basically look like your average human with flashy colors and “alien” appendices.
There is also something else that kinda felt awkward to me, there aren’t enough alien npcs wandering around, the whole game feels kinda “humans in space only” .

I haven’t followed much what Bioware has in stock for the future, but I would really like to think they will bring a little more fantasy content instead of the 90% human population/10% “alien” races in this game lorewise, along with having the possibility of having an ithorian bounty hunter

Anyway, that was just my 2 cents, overall I’m having fun with this game, not the ultimate mmorpg, but fun nontheless.

Quotes

Back & Forth – PvP

tehrealdealz
Just wondering for those that are FOTM Rerollers if you ever feel kind of guilty or ashamed that instead of staying loyal to the class your originally leveled you choose to instead level a FOTM class instead. I’m just trying to understand the mentality of a FOTM reroller.

…

Odahviin
Oh hey i found the answer to your question. It was in another thread created by you titled “Will be rerolling Marauder in 1.2 need help.”

You can find the link here http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=398482

so you can refresh you memory or just see the copy and paste job below( it’s in red for easier reading). I see you already answered your own question. Hope i helped out

tehrealdealz
…
Sup everyone, so as we all know sorcs and BHs are getting nerfed hard, and Marauder is looking like the new OP class next patch. Is there anything I should know about the class before I start leveling? How does it play in pvp and pve? And are you overall happy with the class?

Other

DecanAnderson – Fan Art

The ”Glitch/Cool/Funny Screen Shots” Official Thread

Filed Under: Community, News Tagged With:

SWTOR Video News: Augments and Transfers

May 20, 2012 by

Asher’s back with another episode of SWTOR video news, again covering all the bases for the week. The full links below the video. Enjoy! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Community, News Tagged With:

SWTOR Community Q&A summary

May 19, 2012 by

BioWare’s community team have done a nice summary post of all the community Q&A’s to date. We’ve reproduced it below and will update it regularly as well. Enjoy!

Welcome to the weekly Q&A Archive, a convenient place where we have collected all of the questions and answers from our Q&A blog series for your perusal.

Before posting a question for an upcoming Q&A, we urge you to check this archive to see if it has already been answered.

To read all Weekly Q&As, go here.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Character
Classes
Companions
Crew Skills
Dailies, Missions
Economy
Flashpoints, Operations
Future Content
Gear
Guilds
Legacy
Loot
Mods, Augments, Crystals
Nuts & Bolts
PvP
Servers
Story
Grab Bag

CHARACTER

CLASSES

Abilities

Advanced Classes

Smuggler/Imperial Agent

Trooper/Bounty Hunter

Etc.

COMPANIONS

CREW SKILLS

Schematics, Reverse Engineering

Etc.

DAILIES, MISSIONS

ECONOMY

FLASHPOINTS, OPERATIONS

FUTURE CONTENT

GEAR
(See also Mods, Augments, Crystals)

Appearance

Commendations

Mods(See also Mods, Augments, Crystals)

Social

Stats

Weapons

GUILDS

LEGACY

Abilities:

Species:

Unlocks:

Etc.

LOOT

MODS, AUGMENTS, CRYSTALS

Augments

Crystals

Mods

Etc.

NUTS & BOLTS

Bugs

Features

UI

PvP

Warzones

Etc.

SERVERS

Population, Factions

Transfers

STORY

GRAB BAG

Filed Under: Community, News Tagged With:
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