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Server downtime: things to do tonight

March 6, 2012 by

Four to six hours is a long time without your favourite MMO, so as always we’re here to provide you with a very self-interested list of things to do if you want to stay in the SWTOR mood until Patch 1.1.5 is live and you can jump back in:

1. Take part in our reader survey and go into the draw for a t-shirt

2. Check out the huge amount of details from today’s guild summit, which covered a range of areas including:

a. Legacy system

b. Crew skills and SWTOR economy

c. Roleplaying

d. SWTOR User Interface

e. Anything else discussed related to the game

3. Get some good information on tanking Hammer Station

4. Join the debate on whether SWTOR is hastening a decline in World of Warcraft’s subscriber numbers

5. Put forward your suggestion of the next big thing in SWTOR you’d like changed

6. Check out our SWTOR roundup called Fleet Pass

Filed Under: Maintenance and Downtime, News

SWTOR Guild Summit: ‘And The Rest’

March 6, 2012 by

Daniel Erickson covers off the final session where it’s open slather on anything not covered previously:

The details disclosed:

– 1.2: new daily missions on Corellia
– “Unify to Chest’ option is back i.e. makes gear look more integrated with chest to a voice ‘Power Rangers’ look
– higher resolution textures
– duel / multi-spec: coming in two parts
– first part: switch between skill tree builds
– when do we got more story? “This year”

Q&A

– Ilum bonus quests: turn XP into some other type of reward at 50? Unsure at this stage due to cash flow impact into economy
– TOROZ (David’s) interview with Gabe last week gets a mention as far as realm versus realm PvP: something BioWare wants to do but no ETA
– Additional mechanics and rewards in Nightmare modes
– Cross-faction communication cross-server: infrastructure not there now but something BioWare wants to do. “Down the road a bit”.
– Cross-faction communication could be tied into Legacy setup
– Battle res for Troopers and Bounty Hunters: no plans
– Pod racing / Swoop racing: would love to do it but lots of other priorities. That said, full designed already done for a bunch of SWTOR mini-games
– Balancing factions on servers: Legacy part of resolving that. also cooler outfits for endgame Republic progression
– impact of legacy on encouraging single-faction guilds to play outside guilds: “good feedback”, may need to prioritise work on adversary guild features, want to ensure legacy system doesn’t impact guilds
– Ability to change rank of guild leader from default: “noted”
– PvP backfilling people who leave a Warzone – being worked on for 1.2 plus further incentivisation of staying in a match
– Same gender romance: it’s coming, with story updates. Relies of writer lead times, want to do it right. Always wanted to do these romance arcs but was a budget decision. It’s coming this year with large story update.
– Going back to origin planets: will be putting daily hubs there where appropriate.
– Ability to turn off environment effects to make game run better on lower-end machines: yes a team working on making the game run better. 1.1.5 going live tomorrow should also assist with this. That team is being kept alive to deliver further improvements. Also includes optimisation for higher-end machines where issues exist.
– Still no official plan for a Mac port
– Epic weapon/gear quests: not in 1.2 but something we want to do, some surprises to come, including interesting legacy related quests

Filed Under: Guilds, News Tagged With:

SWTOR Guild Summit: User Interface

March 6, 2012 by

Damion Schubert on User Interface changes:

The details disclosed:

– changes playable from Level 1 once 1.2 hits the PTR
– can customise location of every bar/window
– can resize all windows jointly
– can move secondary windows where you want and have them open anywhere you want
– can save XML files of configurations and share them

Q&A

– click-to-cast: maybe in 1.4 update
– macros: “it’s on the list” – no ETA
– can rule out macros that affect combat
– being able to see buffs on party members in Ops more clearly: can’t resize buff display size in UI
– definitely interested in more graphical representation of Procs etc (1.2 has some improvements in that regard)
– streamlining of abilities to free bar space: something BW very aware of, have to do more exploration on that front – also adding another ability bar
– when multi-spec comes there will be spec-specific quick slots
– GUI changes to GTN: much better in 1.2, can’t disclose a lot more. “80% less stupid already”
– saving key profiles: on the roadmap but no ETA
– SWTOR API: still planning it, quite complicated to ensure fair and balanced. No ETA. “Enormous technical challenge”
– Stealth bar: did have a concept for that, decided not to go ahead with it. If increased demand will re-visit.
– removing own picture and class from UI: no plans
– colour-blind mode: document being developed to support this

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

SWTOR Guild Summit: Guild Features

March 6, 2012 by

Guild features with Damion Schubert:

The details disclosed:

– Guilds extremely important to BioWare
– Guild leader is a hard and thankless job that keeps people invested in the game
– Guild UI could use more features
– Guild banks in 1.2
– Up to 7 tabs can be bought
– Detailed control for guild leaders for every tab
– Can set some tabs to require authenticators reducing chances of a guild being screwed over
– guild ledger that filters out the repair transactions
– guild log with everything including hyperlink to item added or removed
– after 1.2: guild calendar, share events with non-guildies, drop a guild emblem onto armour, in-game guild advertising, guild progression is in the works (no timeline), guild capital ship design exists (but no timeline)

Q&A

– Guild mail: trying to implement something but has big back-in implications as far as storage, no ETA
– Guild interface improvements: will be able to invite people to a group from guild list, will be able to mouse-scroll down guild roster
– Checking crafting skills on guild roster: coming sometime after 1.2 but soonish
– Taxation system: just trying to figure out a way to do it now – no ETA
– Guild approval system from pre-launch being implemented (i.e. you don’t have to be online for GM to approve your membership): “maybe”
– Guild repairs and respecting from guild bank will subtract from allowance

–

Filed Under: From the internets!

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!

SWTOR Guild Summit: Crew Skills and Economy

March 6, 2012 by

Georg Zoeller on economy and crew skills:

The details disclosed:

A. Economy
– economy going well “in spite of GTN”
– annualised GDP in-game has surpassed that of Germany
– crew skill distribution: artifice most popular crafting, underworld most popular mission skill
– wealth distribution level 50’s: 80% or so have less than 400K credits
– less than 1% have more than 10 million credits (!)
– majority of credits spent in-game are on ability training, then things like container purchases etc take over after reaching Level 50
– credit sources: quest rewards dominate
– relative wealth: starting to see that people are able to save credits
– inflation rate in-game is 12%
– faction selection: 57% Empire / 43% Republic across all servers
– 70/30 male/female character gender selection
– Smuggler / Agent remain least popular classes, Inquisitor most popular (hard to see figures on charts on live stream sorry)
– levelling curve – extremely smooth, no large discrepancies in time spent per level etc
– 84% of level 50’s have less than 1 million credits
– understand repair costs are too high but can’t change immediately
– Ilum chest looting: fix coming in 1.2
– not seeing a lot of bots / credit farmers but they are around here and there
– credit spam in-game minimal, people banned immediately where needed

B. Crew Skills

– System overall well received – number two location of where credits go
– 1.2: legacy upgrades, C2-N2/RV-NQ crafting abilities, endgame mods from reverse engineering, every crew skill being given an endgame purpose, lowering cost of higher end speeder training, new schematics
– average crafter is richer and better geared

Q&A

– ‘maybe’ going to add repair costs to PvP gear but nothing formalised and definitely won’t be equipment damage on dying in PvP
– social impact or purpose of crew skills: crafters best source of custom appearances as of 1.2
– reusable content (stims) likely to be phased out – focus is on creating content not for one or tewo benefits linked to end-game
– crafter contract system: not an immediate concern but on the ‘wall of crazy’
– ‘we are in love with our crafting system,” and want to bring it up to the glory it deserves
– 1.2 will have tooltips to tell you if you can reverse engineer something
– longer crew-skill missions of 16 hours or more: “We like that idea,” would incentivise ‘popping’ into the game once a day
– two companions on one mission to reduce time” nothing planned as want to keep GUI simple (off-hand comment about an iPad SWTOR app “way in the future”)
– no failing of expensive missions bought on the GTN coming with 1.2

Filed Under: News

SWTOR Guild Summit: Legacy information

March 6, 2012 by

We’re pleased to throw Toby, our day-shift news droid into the fray to report some of the highlights from Day 1 of the Guild Summit. Thanks Toby! And damn you day jobs, damn you!

Hi, Toby here, reporting from the guild summit live stream. Here’s the key bits from the legacy panel:

The details disclosed:

– buffs unlocked for every companion quest line completed
– although not in 1.2, a ‘Grey’ alignment will have its rewards, just like ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ side alignment
– social rank unlocks: can dance with companion, ‘brawling abilities’ for unarmed duels
– RP packs to go along with new emotes
– most legacy unlocks can not only be earned but can also be purchased
– cooldown reductions for Fleet Passes
– new Sprint level (Bounty Hunters via their Rocket Pack, the rest via ‘rocket boots’
– training dummies – including Warzone and Operations dummies
– Repair Atsromech on your ship – will repair, buy and sell your items
– Neutral GTN terminal and mailbox on your ship! (The GTN terminal option is “VERY” high up the legacy system)
– Any legacy items can be mailed to your other toons, including cross-faction
– Unique Orange items only available via Legacy
– the future: customising your alt experience e.g. buy speeder license earlier than currently available

Q&A

– character transfers ‘not in immediate future’ but will be able to meld legacies
– no specific plan to allow sharing of legacies with other players but it’s on the list to do
– yes you will be able to use Force Choke on Republic side (via Legacy unlock)
– yes a WoW Barber shop equivalent is on the table but a ways off
– shared alt bank space (legacy bank) is on the timetable, so set date
– no plans for additional character slots, related to legacy or otherwise
– 1.3: can buy buffs for XP for things you like doing (see character customisation above)
– no present plans for bind to legacy gear dropping in PvP / Flashpoiints / Operations
– dual spec: ‘multi-spec’ is coming and likely to be tied to legacy system – well after 1.2 though
– spec being written to allow for both character and legacy name changes (likely to cost or have some other ‘gate’)
– maximum legacy level cap is 50 but definitely expandable
– C2-N2 will have a voice restraining bolt
– companions can’t go in legacy family tree at this stage
– cosmetic ship upgrades are in the future but not necessarily tied to legacy
– non-Force users can only use legacy unlocked Force buffs if there’s another Force user in the family

Filed Under: Events, Guilds, News Tagged With:

SWTOR Patch 1.2: Legacy – trailer released

March 6, 2012 by

As promised by BioWare as part of their Guild Summit agenda, details of the upcoming 1.2 update have been released. First and foremost is the 1.2 trailer, which you can watch right now:

So as you’ve seen the key goodies from the trailer are:

1. The game update is titled ‘Legacy’
2. There’s a new Warzone called Novare Coast
3. A new Operation called Explosive Conflict
4. A new Flashpoint called The Lost Island
5. The expanded legacy system
6. UI customisation
7. Improved character textures and appearance customisation
8. Warzone rankings
9. New Corellia daily missions
10. New Mini Pets
11. Guild bank implementation
12. Lots of new gear / emotes / vehicles etc

So – do you like what you see?

Filed Under: Events, News Tagged With:

Server maintenance: 6th March (with local time conversions)

March 5, 2012 by

This week’s maintenance is a 6-hour one, which means we may see Patch 1.15 hit the servers, but that’s not confirmed as yet. Full details below but here are the time conversions:

AEDT: 7pm to 1am Tuesday evening

AWST: 4pm to 11pm

NZDT: 9pm to 3am

 

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 8AM CST (6AM PST/9AM EST/2PM GMT/3PM CET)

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

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

Filed Under: Maintenance and Downtime, News Tagged With: ,

Heavy Damage: Tanking Hammer Station

March 5, 2012 by

Heavy Damage is our weekly Tanking column – if you have suggestions of what you’d like covered, drop our resident Tank, Alec Bailey a line.

This week I will tell you how to keep you and your team alive while on Hammer Station. My guides may be focused on tanks, but it doesn’t hurt for you healers and damage dealers to take a look at what your tank has to handle.

Hammer Station is suggested for Level 16 players. A full group is needed until about level 22 or so when two people can run it with companions. Hammer Station is available to both Empire and Republic players.

Areas

Expansion Excavation

The Flashpoint starts out in the Expansion Excavation area.  The boss for this area of the map is a very large droid named DN-314 Tunneler. In this area if you or one of your teammates have a high enough slicing skill, you can activate a drill about halfway through the area to bypass some trash mobs and head straight to the boss fight. The drill is located in a dead-end room about halfway through the Expansion Excavation area. After the boss battle with DN-314, the group will be given a Lightside/Darkside option, and the choice will determine how you proceed to the second area, the Security Wing.

Security Wing

After your Darkside/Lightside choice you will enter the Security Wing area. The boss in the Security Wing is Vorgan the Volcano, Vorgan is accompanied by two adds, Sawbone (Heals) and Torch (Damage).

After the boss battle you’ll come to a bridge – when you encounter this bridge remember that Blue is good and Red is bad. If you try to cross while the bridge is red you’ll fall to your death, so wait for the colour change – it doesn’t stay blue long so don’t linger.

Section Zero

In Section Zero you will encounter your final boss, Battlelord Kreshan who is accompanied by 3-4 enemies summoned throughout the fight.

Bosses

DN-314 Tunneler

The best plan of attack on this boss is damage – kill the Tunneler as fast as possible. DN-314 will periodically spawn floating droids that explode when in proximity of a player. AoE attacks can cause them to explode out of their damage radius. If the group had a splicer and your group took the alternate route, your healer and ranged dps (if available) can stand on some crates to help avoid the adds damage. DN-314’s second ability is a laser beam that targets a random player in the party – make sure the healer is switching between the targeted players as the laser beam does quite a bit of damage. If using the second strategy, make sure you stay within range of heals while tanking DN-314.

Vorgan the Volcano

Set markers on the three enemies in front of you: Sawbones, Torch, and Vorgan. That order should be your kill order. If you can kill both the lieutenants simultaneously, then that’s also a great strategy – just make sure you don’t lose Vorgan’s Aggro.

Battlelord Kreshan

Kreshan is the final and most difficult boss, fielding four abilities.

Frontal Blaster Spray – A cone AoE attack that is actually easily avoided if while tanking you keep his back to your party.

Bomb – this is also avoidable as it’s marked by a large red reticule on the ground. Move out of it and suffer no damage.

Knockback –  Knockback is more dangerous to Tanks than anyone else. If you don’t watch where you are standing, it can knock you off the platform to your death. Keep Kreashan in the middle of the room facing away from your healer and you’ll be fine.

Adds – Kreshan also calls upon adds periodically,  the best plan of attack is to bunch up and AoE / burn down the adds.

 

This has been a guide to Hammer Station for tanks, by a Tank.( Healers and Damage Dealers are welcome to its wisdom too!)

As Always Stay Frosty and May the Force be with you!

Filed Under: News, Tanking Tagged With: ,

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:

Fleet Pass: SWTOR weekly roundup

March 4, 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

Kexin – SWTOR General Discussion Sub-Forum

US transfers to Oceanic servers?

I’m a late night American player who specifically targeted Harbinger and Swiftsure for its Oceanic population at my playing hours. Now that those guys are moving I want the option of transferring with the people I play with or else get left behind or even worst, having to reroll, AGAIN.

What is Bioware’s stance on this issue?

Melsione – SWTOR General Discussion

Australian server transfer in LATE April!

Seriously,

We get a new server! We have lvl 50’s who raid and play endgame, but we have to wait almost 2 months before we can bring them across and actually play on the better latency?

Which person came up with this concept? You knew when the aussie servers were coming up and you did not allow for server transfers to happen immediately?

So now if we want to play on our mains (Which we DO) we have to go back to the 250 latency pings for another 2 months! Bravo!

And what happens when people take existing legacy surnames which we cannot reserve?

This is so pathetic!

Well only solution for me: End subscription till April and then try again! The only reason I renewed my subscription was because of wanting to play on low latency servers!

Evuke – SWTOR General Discussion

Will the new Australian servers kill the current unofficial Australian servers?

BW have announced they will be releasing Australian servers in Australia in early March, and giving the Australian’s transfers off the current unofficial Australian servers “The Swiftsure” and “The Harbringer” to those new servers.

My concern is that as an American playing on The Swiftsure that it will effectively kill my server by removing 70% of its population.

I rolled on this server as i work nightshifts it seemed like a logical choice, the unofficial Aussie servers usually are very well populated 24/7 unlike other servers. So it suited me perfectly.

After the Aussies all transfer off we will be left with a ghost-town server with no option to do anything other than re-roll on a populated server or unsub, and tbh the unsub option is more appealing than having to re-roll again and lose everything i have worked on for the past 2 months (3 level 50’s).

I suggest that EVERYONE on the current 2 Australian servers “the swiftsure” and “the harbringer” be given free transfers so we can all move to servers that suit us rather than punishing us by leaving us on deserted servers.

 

Quotes

StephenReid – SWTOR General Discussion Sub-Forum

Hello everyone. I can absolutely understand the frustrations expressed here, and I appreciate that for the most part, you’re being constructive in your comments. Here’s a little more insight into the situation.

The character transfer system is being actively worked on by the development team. It’s a large, complex project, made more complicated by the Legacy System – and it has to work perfectly. As always, it is not the only task the team as a whole is undertaking, but it’s a priority. It has not been deliberately delayed, nor is it being ‘held back’ for any reason. As you know, the first stage of the system will be a one-off, optional transfer for those who are based in the regions defined in our FAQ. At some point after that, we’ll bring a more fully-featured character transfer system online for all to use.

I can understand the frustration of those of you who have been playing on the US servers and waiting for transfers. We know your enthusiasm and excitement for the game – you wouldn’t have taken the steps you did to get the game earlier than the official launch if you weren’t enthusiastic. We’re working as hard as we can to get the system in place. If we could have brought it online earlier, we would have. However, priorities post-launch had to be directed towards the game itself. The team’s been working flat-out to improve the game, including bug fixes and additional content.

Other

Massively.joystiq article

Filed Under: Community, News Tagged With:
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