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Suggestion Box: SWTOR playing time

May 18, 2012 by

This week’s topic of debate is the amount of time you spend playing SWTOR. With Diablo 3 released this week, there’s a lot of people who seem to have taken a breather from SWTOR to kill their wrist clicking a mouse to move their hero round some dark dungeons and cathedrals. Once people have had their fill of that, there’s plenty of other games coming up.

So it’s over to you: compared to say 3 months ago, are you playing SWTOR as much as previously, more than previously or is it playing second fiddle to something else?

Post away in comments!

Filed Under: News, Opinion, Suggestion Box Tagged With:

Star Wars RP Research: Hutt Space!

May 17, 2012 by

In the course of some studies this evening, I stumbled across a fascinating little research abstract. It’s about a research study looking at a group of Star Wars RP’ers who use a region in Second Life called Hutt Space. The full research article is still a month or two off publication, but here’s the abstract:

Immersive virtual settings are evolving to become new “spaces of life”. Humans inhabit these different virtual worlds through their avatars, and tend to gather into communities. However, the behavioral factors underlying the cognitive process of immersion in virtual worlds are still far to be understood. We here investigated these factors using the Star Wars Role-Play community of the virtual setting of Second Life as a model. More specifically, our studies focused on the immersion process in the “Hutt Space”, a portion of the Star Wars Galaxy ruled by the alien species of the Hutts, which combines the trademark aspects of Star Warsuniverse. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we identified some of the factors which favor the immersion process. Our results suggest that the different behavioral factors contributing to the immersion process can be organized in three structuring dimensions: commitment, cohesion, and coherence. We also unveil a compensatory mechanism between appearance and behavioral factors in creation and maintenance of social groups in virtual worlds. Finally, we point out some of the behavioral aspects of the evolution from passive media engagement (spectators), to active media engagement (actors), and suggest a theoretical framework to investigate how human inhabit immersive virtual spaces.

My semi-educated guess is that research studies are already underway in relation to SWTOR. Anyone want to suggest what the research topics will be?

Filed Under: News, Roleplay Tagged With: ,

Believe It or Not, I’m Walking On Air (Spelunking in SWTOR)

May 17, 2012 by

Inane references to The Greatest American Hero aside, there’s plenty of legitimate fun to be had in SWTOR and Bioware have promised much more to come in the future.

That said, it doesn’t stop some of us from making up our own entertainment and I’m no exception. First a quick disclaimer: it’s almost certain that I’m not the first to propose this idea, but as I’m not aware of any previous endeavors I’ll pretend this is novel, so no flaming if you’ve heard this before, okay?

Like any compulsive explorer, I have to know what’s on the other side of that hill. It doesn’t matter what hill – it’s a metaphor. As it turns out, eventually, the answer is nothing. Welcome to the Land of Dark Hexagons.

In the past, when my obsessive prodding of boundaries leads me to the edge of the world, I usually admire the view then turn around and get on with questing. But yesterday as I stared at the legendary floating mountains of Alderaan I thought, ‘why not jump and take a screenshot to prove what a dick I am?‘ So I did… and a new age of gaming was born.  I’ve called it a ‘Spelunk Jump’ because it almost rhymes (sort-of) and it’s easier to say than ‘BASE Jumping Off the Edge of the World’ or ‘BeJuOtEotW’ for short. See? I said ‘Spelunk Jump’ was easier.

Granted, true BASE jumping involves a parachute, but since the wizards at BioWare have yet to provide one in my loot drops, I’ve decided to go without.  The same goes for having anything to actually land on which makes the point of slowing one’s decent somewhat moot anyway.

Of course the real challenge is finding the sweet spot through obstacles and I won’t lie, you need persistence, patience and a good eye for a tender spot. In fact, it requires the kind of fanatacism reserved for donning explosive underdaks shortly before hitting the overseas departure lounge. Once you’ve clambered over enough rocks, in enough places, you’ll hit a magical chink in Bioware’s slippery rock/invisible wall armour. Lo, True Believers, the end of the world will present itself to you as the ground ends abruptly and you’ll get your first view of floating rocks since you last watched Avatar.  Then it’s just a matter of a quick running jump into the void, making sure you snap a juicy screenshot of your plummet into nothing before you reappear in front of the closest medical droid. You won’t incur damage, but you will loose any active buffs or stims, so be warned.

No photo, no bragging rights.  Deal? Okay then. We’ll let you in the club.

Is this the beginning of a new e-sport? Will groups gather for a mass Spelunk Jump?

Clearly not. In fact it’s probably the least productive thing you can do in the game besides trying to discuss cushion stuffing with your ship droid. But is it satisfying? Absolutely – if you’re a little wrong in the head. But until ‘Jawa Throwing’ or ‘Ewok Punching’ becomes a mini-game, it’ll do.

If you’ve found any good jumping points or map edges, send in a photo of your efforts or coordinates so someone else can try.

 

Go on… You know you want to.

Filed Under: Humour, News Tagged With: ,

SWTOR Patch 1.2.4 Notes

May 16, 2012 by

The servers have been back for a while, so if you haven’t already, check out the 1.2.4 patch notes below. There’s quite a few changes although most are bug fixes. Enjoy:

1.2.4 Patch Notes

5/15/2012

Classes and Combat

General

      • The Guard ability can now be reapplied if the player dies with it activated. Previously, players sometimes received an error indicating that their target was already guarded.

Sith Inquisitor

General
      • Lightsaber Charge’s audio effects no longer loop indefinitely.

Companion Characters

Xalek

    • Xalek now receives the correct amount of Shield Absorption from equipped gear.

Crew Skills

Crafting Skills

    • French and German tooltips now indicate the percentage chance for reverse engineering.

Flashpoints and Operations

General

      • Players who advance from level 49 to 50 while near an Operation phase gate now see the gate color change to indicate their eligibility to enter.

Flashpoints

Directive 7
        • Players can no longer obtain the missions for Story and Hard Mode for this Flashpoint at the same time.
Lost Island
        • LR-5 Sentinel Droid now reliably activates his Plasma Coils during the encounter.
The Battle of Ilum
        • Players can no longer obtain the missions for Story and Hard Mode for this Flashpoint at the same time.
The Black Talon
        • An audio effect from the fusion cutter in this Flashpoint no longer loops indefinitely.
The False Emperor
        • Players can no longer obtain the missions for Story and Hard Mode for this Flashpoint at the same time.

Operations

Explosive Conflict
      • General Vorgath’s speech now features the correct voice modulation.

Items

General

    • Rebreather head slot items now appear on Sith Pureblood characters.
    • Equipping a hooded robe in combination with certain head slot items no longer causes baldness.
    • Players can no longer add color crystals to some items that did not appear to have color crystal slots, causing the crystals to become irretrievable.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

World Missions
Belsavis
          • Breakthrough: All members of the group now receive credit for completed of this mission.
Ilum
          • World Story missions on Ilum can no longer be abandoned.
Taris
          • No Escape: Republic Astromech Droids are no longer attacked by nearby friendly forces.
Voss
          • Players can no longer complete The Dark Hollow without first completing Primary Target. Completing these missions out of order could prevent players from completing Primary Target.
Class Missions
Jedi Knight
          • Fate of the Jedi: The cinematic with the Jedi Council no longer takes much longer than intended to begin playing.
Jedi Consular
          • Automated Defense: Euphony Guard Droids now count towards this mission objective.
          • Vivicar Awaits: This mission can no longer become blocked if a player logs out during the “Defeat the Ambush” step.
Sith Inquisitor
          • Into the Pit: The final conversation with Major Bessiker can no longer be repeated.
Imperial Agent
          • Shadow of the Dark Lord: Darth Zhorrid now follows through with her threat to torture a character in one of the dialogue paths in this mission.
          • The Star Chamber: Players who destroy the codex and fight the Sith Lords aboard the station are now able to enter the Tenebrous to complete the mission. Players who were previously blocked from completing it must reset the mission.
Trooper
        • The Battle of Corellia: The Striker One Uplink can now be used from the mission tracker.

PvP

General

      • Mini-pets can no longer be summoned inside Warzones.
      • A fix for some causes of players becoming stuck dead in Warzones has been implemented, though the issue may still rarely occur.

Warzones

Voidstar
      • Characters that exit the protected spawn area before the match begins are now killed.

UI

Guild Bank

      • Crafted items stored in the Guild Bank now display their tooltips correctly.

Social

    • Closing the Add Friend dialogue no longer makes the Add Friend button on the friends list unusable.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

  • Actions in the UI layout editor, chat window, and crafting window now prevent a player from being labeled as AFK.
Filed Under: News, Patch Notes Tagged With:

Fleet Pass: SWTOR Weekly Roundup

May 15, 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.

Threads

Redcorn – General Discussion

Voiced Missions not Worth It in the End
I loved the voice acting. It really pulled me into the story…..the first time. Now I space bar everything except class story line when leveling an alt. I had thought that I would want to play the different ‘decision’ trees through the conversation, but have found them to be inconsequential making the replay not worthwhile.

So this I believe will be the first and last MMORPG that offers such an extensive voiced narrative. The cost benefit does not exist to support it. The lead time required for development is also a problem.

What do you think?

 

Azzras – General Discussion

Server Population is GROWING!
Fleet used to only have about 50-60 republic players, but now during prime time has over 100!

As BW releases more copies of the game, more players log in.

Tis a good day.

 

Halinmonk – Story & Lore

Which romance is best written?
I’ve always been fond of Corso Rig’s storyline, but right now I am leaning towards Andro Revel as the most well written. It feels very…realistic.

 

Quotes

Vian – Community

In my decades of gaming, I’ve met a lot of gamers, and really good ones are much rarer than pretty good ones. And given that a lot of women hide their gender online so they aren’t pre-judged by people who assume that they’ll never measure up, you can’t actually say you’ve never met an exceptional woman gamer unless you ask every single person you ever game with what their gender is.

Which would be either creepy, or improbable. I’m going with the latter.

But even if you haven’t met a really good woman gamer, that says more about your social life than about our playing abilities. It’s not like we don’t exist.

Whatever “good” means – is it DPS? Kills per raid? Bank balance? How much fun you have when you’re with them? How long they’ve been gaming? Whether they do what you want them to or not? That time they managed to keep you alive even though you kept standing in the @$%^ fire like a Noob? Is someone who’s really good at playing the way they want to play a lesser gamer because you think they should be playing your way? Your statement is essentially unquantifiable.

 

Other

Jasta_ – Fan Art

I guess this is kind of fan art…

Been a bit disgusted with the amount of crying lately on these boards. Some people are never happy. I just don’t see what people are so worked up about, this is one of the best MMO’s I’ve ever played – it’s not perfect no but then what is?

Anyway I was wondering what the original Star Wars movies would have been like if the characters had forums to whinge on…

Yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if this violated some form of TOS but it’s all in fun, honest:

(Click on pic for the full size version – it’s gold!)

 

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

Server Downtime: 15th May 2012

May 15, 2012 by

Another nice standard four-hour downtime this week:

AEST: 5pm-9pm
AWST: 3pm-7pm
NZST: 7pm-11pm

The full blurb below as always!

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST).

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Filed Under: News, Servers Tagged With:

For Our Senior Sith Citizens

May 14, 2012 by

Here at TOROZ we believe in helping out the community, and it’s in that vein that we bring to the attention of our senior citizens, a mobility aid with a difference:

It was created by Keith Greenstein – nice work Keith!

[via Technabob]

Filed Under: Humour, News Tagged With:

Oceanic Guild Spotlight: Rogue Squadron

May 14, 2012 by

If you’d like your guild spotlighted, just use our contact form to let us know. Or if you like, respond to the questions shown below and send them in – we love to profile guilds and the work they’re doing. The only requirement is that you’re an active oceanic guild. Please be patient if you don’t hear back from us immediately – we will only be spotlighting a guild every week or so.

Name of guild

Rogue Squadron (Mirror Guild: Renegade Squadron)

Guild website

http://rogue-squadron.guildlaunch.com

History of your guild’s name?

Rogue Squadron was selected by our Guild Leader Arctorro when the Pre-Launch Guild program was setup. Obviously it is drawn from the movies and particularly the books which Arc quite enjoyed. It also fits in with our philosophy which is to not be bound to any strict regimen. Renegade Squadron was setup some time later after the Game when live. To allow an output to explore the game from the other side.

What sort of guild are you? 

We are a casual guild with members taking part in both PvE and PvP. We have been dipping our toes into Operations. Our aim is to try and experience as much of the content that the game has to offer but at our own pace.

What are the achievements that your guild is most proud of?

We have completed both Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace on normal mode. Including Karagga’s Palace on the first serious attempt.

Why did you choose to be Republic?

Since the guild didn’t come across as a whole from another MMO, for us it was a personal choice that would have many different answers. We each chose it for one reason or another and found a friendly home in Rogue Squadron.

You have one minute to convince someone they should be in your guild – what would you say to them?

If you want a guild with a mature group of players who are still able to be silly and have fun. And you want to experience the game as a part of a group without making yourself feel like you’re being tied into a daily chore, then this is the guild for you.

Are you recruiting at the moment and if so what classes / type of players are you looking for?

Yes, we are looking to expand now that we have made it across to Dalborra. We are looking at all classes but primarily we need a couple of healers plus some more ranged DPS, preferably Smugglers and Troopers. Check out the website for details.

What are your predictions for the next 6 months for the guild?

Expanding and progressing steadily through the content, moving onto the Hard Mode ops and into Explosive Conflict.

Filed Under: Community, Guilds, News Tagged With:

SWTOR Video News: Patch 1.3 Speculation

May 13, 2012 by

Asher releases Episode 5 of his video news and it’s another great roundup – notes supporting it are below:

Episode 5 off SWTOR News. All news in this video is from the week starting 06/05/2012. Please remember to share, comment and subscribe!

Links for this weeks articles:

Dev Q&A
http://www.swtor.com/blog/community-qa-may-11th-2012

Next Weeks Dev Q&A question submition
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=452578

Offical Star Wars: The Old Republic Podcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMWLao5M8bA

SWTOR News Special Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxpzBkHlH-U

EA Blames the casual gamers
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-08-ea-blames-star-wars-the-old-repu…

Patch Notes for 1.2.3
http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.2.3/582012

Patch Notes for 1.2.3a
http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.2.3a/5102012

Star Wars 1313
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=%2085613835

Crew Skills Tutorial
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=132015

TOROZ
https://www.oceanicgamer.com/

Lencorp Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/lenc0rp

Fan Art
http://www.nobodythere.ca/

Filed Under: Community, News

Suggestion Box: Getting a Friend on Board

May 12, 2012 by

With all the news and debate this week about subscriber numbers, it’s a good time to get some feedback on how people tend to tell their friends about the game and maybe even convince them to jump in and have a go.

Have you successfully convinced a skeptical friend to give SWTOR a try? If so, post away in comments on what you did!

Filed Under: News, Suggestion Box Tagged With:

SWTOR Video News: the 400K Drop Issue

May 11, 2012 by

Asher has backed up with an extra episode of his video news, dedicating an episode to the issue of SWTOR’s 400K drop in subscribers.

He makes some interesting points, some I agree with and others I don’t – which is what makes discussing any MMO fun! I too like the point on higher population servers increasing the chance of people getting their friends involved in the game.

Have a look for yourself:

What do YOU think?

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

Server Downtime: 10th May 2012

May 10, 2012 by

Unfortunately there’s an unexpected server downtime tonight, to fix some issues that have arisen since patch 1.2.3. It’s a four hour downtime, affecting us at the usual time:

AEST: 5pm-9pm
AWST: 3pm-7pm
NZST: 7pm-11pm

BioWare’s blurb:

Maintenance

Date: Thursday, May 10th, 2012

Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST).

All game servers will be offline during this period. This game maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Over to you – have you experienced issues since 1.2.3 went live?

Filed Under: News, Servers Tagged With:
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