As the original poster explained, there has been an issue with Rakata weapons for some time now. Players can raid hard mode EV for weeks and get Rakata weapons that are rank 126 when they would already have much better weapons at that point. The Rakata weapons should be level 140. They look cool with their black-red lightsaber crystals btu it doesn’t change the fact that they are basically useless at that level. So plenty of players complained and at first, it didn’t seem like BioWare was listening. Then they came in to say it would be fixed in 1.1.1. But alas… it is still not fixed. So what’s the deal? Well, the weapons will be fixed in an upcoming patch instead. Sorry to those who have them or were working towards them who are not benefitting from it right now. If you already have them, they will be upgraded…
Author: Lisa Clark
Another James Ohlen Interview: Challenges of Creating SWTOR
James Ohlen is pretty good about talking to the press and fan sites. In another of many interviews he has done, he talks to IGN about the challenges of creating SWTOR. Ohlen, Game Director, has a huge part in the game and his work doesn’t end now because the game is launched. He also has to oversee updates, future content and more. But with this title comes great responsibility and Ohlen shares with IGN some of the challenges he has faced. Here’s a snippet: IGN: What were you trying to accomplish with this first BioWare MMO? James Ohlen: I really wanted to bring in the three BioWare pillars to the online space. Those are represented by story, by the player’s choice in story, and by characters. Those are the three big things that I felt weren’t really well represented in the MMO space. I felt that it was the smartest…
Ideal Guild Quiz – Find and Recruit Players for Your Guild
Are you looking for new applicants for your guild? This is the best way for your SWTOR guild to find and recruit quality applicants. It’s a handy quiz that helps you set parameters for your guild to aide in recruiting the most suited players as members. As a guild leader, you know that your guild is unique from the many other guilds out there. This is why choosing members is so important. Quality guilds are selective and don’t just let any player who asks into their guild. Instead, you want to search for players who meet certain qualifications or expectations of your guild. Personality is also important when seeking a guild in SWTOR – or any MMORPG. Your personality should flow well with the rest of the guild and with the overall guild mission and objectives. This is why this handy quiz is so great at helping applicants find the…
BioWare Story is So Good in SWTOR- Could it Be Too Good?
Have you ever watched a great movie that moved you in some way but after it was over you felt a tad sad that it had ended? Sure, you’re glad you watched it and you’re thankful for the opportunity but you’re left with a slightly empty feeling of “what now?” Could this be a problem with SWTOR? IGN writer CharlesOnyett has some thoughts on this very topic. He talks about “fear of the finale”and how absorbed he is in the story- but that maybe this could be a bad thing. CouldBioWare have done too good of a job with the story in SWTOR? Onyett says: Mymain concern is what happens when the story ends. I’ll meet no new quest giverswho care what I do or fear what I say. I’ll run through the same corridors ofenemies time and time again for a percent chance to achieve a reward. I’ll playthe…
Family Research Council against Gay Relationships in SWTOR
You will remember that some time ago, some SWTOR players complained that the game did not give the option for same sex companion relationships. BioWare first defended this decision by explaining that homosexual relationships did not exist in the original Star Wars worlds, at least not that were known to us from the storyline. However, it seems they have changed their tone to meet the demands of the fans as they have announced that they will be launching a same-sex romance component to the game in a future patch. This is completely optional and players will choose whether or not they want to romance companions of the same sex or not. Many gay fans are celebrating the news but of course the voices of those against it are just as loud (maybe louder?). The Family Research Council (FRC) is speaking out against the gay relationships in SWTOR and had this announcement…
Kinect Star Wars Funny Duel with Darth Vader: Video
One reason I got a Kinect was for Star Wars, I admit. My son seconded that decision as the 5-year-old is a huge Star Wars fan. He has Lego Star Wars for his DSi and was thrilled when he found out about Kinect Star Wars. So anyway, for those of you who maybe don’t know what it is all about yet, there is a great video to show you what it’s all about. Kinect Star Wars Funny Duel with Darth Vader is a great video for laughs and also to get people talking about the game. Remember, with Kinect Star Wars, YOU are the controller.Check it out:
Dualshockers Interview: BioWare’s Cory Butler and the Future of SWTOR
You know how we love bringing you great SWTOR news and interviews so here’s a good one from DualShockers with BioWare’s Cory Butler. In this 2,000 word interview with Butler, we learn a lot about the future of SWTOR. Here’s a snippet: Giuseppe: As you may have seen from my review, I really like the game, and so do many others. I gather that the launch was a definite success, but what are your personal impressions about this first month of The Old Republic? Cory: It’s gone really really well. We’ve been preparing for this for a lot of time, running fire drills, planning for the worst and working for the best. We were pleasantly surprised with the server stability and just how smooth the launch went, knock on wood. G: Star Wars: The Old Republic is a direct sequel to Knights of The Old Republic, but it’s obviously an…
Georg Zoeller Answers Player Asking for Ship Droid Weapons
If you’ve played SWTOR long enough to get your ship then you have met your ship companion. These lovable droids live to please their master but C2-N2 (and 2V-R8) do not have weapons and they tell you when you meet them that they are not armed for combat. One player asked a question in the forums: I have got alot of weapons and cant see a weapon I can equip for C2N2. I tried looking on the web but no answers could someone help me plz. Thanks And while other players attempted to explain that C2-N2 is a non-combat companion best suited to going on missions for you, the real fun began when Georg Zoeller came in with an official explanation. The official response: Dear Sir, I am writing to you in response to your complaint about our product, the C2-N2 droid. We regret that you are experiencing difficulties with…
Is SWTOR Too Big for its Britches?
There’s been a lot of talk about SWTOR, its cost, its expectations and whether or not it is actually too big for its britches in the gaming scene. LA Times recently covered a piece which questions whether or not SWTOR could be the “costliest game of all time.” LA Times says: With a price tag approaching $200 million, Star Wars: The Old Republic is likely to be the most expensive game of all time to produce — and a colossal gamble for the game’s publisher, Electronic Arts Inc. And they go on with: BioWare, the EA studio responsible for the online game, had spent close to six years on the title, hiring hundreds of programmers, writers and artists, as well as a legion of contract workers. The hope is that The Old Republic will attract millions of players, each willing to spend $60 to buy the game and $15 or…
Is the SWTOR Launcher Issue Keeping you from Playing?
An irritating launcher issue is affecting some SWTOR players and they are unable to play the game at all. Due to a problem in the recent 1.1 update, they are unable to launch the game Complaints on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic forum explain the problem and BioWare staff do try to offer a solution until a more permanent fix can be found. “”We are recommending anyone who is encountering problems with installing main assets to use the ‘repair’ option in the launcher,” said a BioWare spokesperson. “I know some of you have mentioned that you have tried it and a similar error occurs but it can sometimes take multiple passes for the repair to fix the problem files. “When you run the repair option it will appear that it is going to download the full 12gb assets. This is not the case. The repair function will scan…
BioWare Bans Old Republic Player for Using Internet Meme
“I’m 12 and what is this”. Is BioWare meme-ignorant or was this an awesome case of self-owning? Here’s an interesting story of a recent SWTOR ban. Apparently, this user/gamer was banned for using an Internet meme: “I’m 12 and what is this”. According to the reports this player posted the popular meme in a forum post and was then “permanently suspended” for age violation, as the game requires you to be 13 or older to play. (The writer in me loves that Kotaku pointed out that a “Permanent suspension” is a bit of an oxymoron.) Here is an image of the Community Support message regarding the alleged ban: While many readers are calling this outrageous, we have to be realistic about it. How is BioWare to know that the user was, in fact, using an Internet meme and not actually 12 years old and violating their terms? Even if the…
SWTOR Ability Delay Fixed after January 24th Patch
This is the fix a great number of people have been waiting on and it’s finally here and confirmed by players. The ability delay bug is reportedly fixed, according to players. What a relief! Of all the players happy to see this fix, snipers seem to be the happiest as it greatly affected their class play. While I am not surprised at all that they fixed it, I amimpressed that they fixed it so quickly. As Massivelyreports: PrincipalLead Combat Designer GeorgZoeller announced today that theinfamous ability delay should be clearing up nicely, thanks to an overnight1.1.0b patch. He says BioWare didn’t want to wait until the next big patch toroll it out, opting to instead deliver it as quickly to players as possible. However, Zoeller also notes that the team “is not done improving combatresponsiveness” and has several other tweaks and fixes in the work forpatch 1.1.1. Other areas of…
George Lucas to Retire from Star Wars: Blames Disgruntled Fans
Have you ever felt unappreciated in your job or maybe in some other role in your life? As a full-time writer, I can tell you that I definitely know the feeling. However, someone you might not expect to know that feeling is George Lucas. At 67, he’s created an empire of himself, namely with his Star Wars legacy and also four popular Indiana Jones films. So you can imagine Lucas’ surprise when he pitched his new film, “Red Tails” and no one from Hollywood even wanted to take a peak. The New York Times reports on what must have been a new feeling for George Lucas: “He made a movie about a plucky band of freedom fighters who battle an evil empire — a movie loaded with special effects like no one had seen before.” In an interview with the New York Times, Lucas explains why he is retiring from…
AbleGamers Votes SWTOR ‘Mainstream Game of the Year’
SWTOR has received another reward/recognition in the gaming community and quite honestly, I think this one is more important than any so far. AbleGamers Votes SWTOR ‘Mainstream Game of the Year’ and this is one of the best recognitions they’ve gotten so far. AbleGamers.com is “the #1 Site for Disabled Gamers” and a fantastic resource for anyone who loves games but has a disability that can affect their enjoyment of those games. Not only did they review SWTOR but they had some great words to say about its friendliness to those with disabilities: Every year there are two or three highly anticipated games released with massive hype and record-setting expectations. Most times these games fall completely flat when it comes to game accessibility, but this year one game set itself apart by including a fair amount of accessibility at launch while still meeting the public’s expectations for an amazing game….
Lego Explanation of the Tank-Heal-Damage Triad- by 6 Year Old
The concept of the tank-heal-damage triad in your typical MMO, including SWTOR, is so easy that a 6-year-old can understand it. It does make you wonder then, why so many people you come across in game seem to have issues with this very basic concept. Anyway, we stumbled across this very cute blog by Jasper, a 6-year old SWTOR fan. This kid needs to meet up with my 5-year-old (soon to be 6) because I think they could really be pals. I also have a Lego/Star Wars fan in my house and this looks exactly like something my two boys would do. Both gamer fans, former WoW players and huge collectors of Lego sets, why not use the very popular toy to explain this gaming concept? On his blog, Jasper says: “If the tank and healers dies, um, the damage dealer will end up dying, because he doesn’t have the…
SWTOR update 1.1 Valor Bug Patched- Exploiters Punished
The first SWTOR update, patch 1.1 was a rocky one indeed. While there are many great things that came with Rise of the Rakghouls, there were also some bugs and issues. The biggest of which was the open-world PvP zone of Ilum. The new patch allowed the easy exploitation of this zone and some players took maximum advantage of the opportunity to farm up large amounts of Valor points. Game Zone actually previously predicted this would happen: When the patch first went live, our very own Andrew Clouther wrote in his initial impressions that the new system would fail due to server imbalance – predicting the faction with more players would crush, camp, and “make the other factions’ life hell””. And sure enough, that is exactly what happened with this patch. As GameZone reports: In some cases, people were rumored to get as many as 20 Valor levels in about…
One Analyst Says SWTOR Sales Concerns are Being Overdone
Some are saying that SWTOR is not selling as well as it was first expected. There has been a bit of an outcry over this in the industry but one analyst group doesn’t think the concerns are that big of a deal. According to Gamasutra: Analyst group Macquarie Securities has released a new report which states that, while there are clearly concerns in the industry that Electronic Arts and BioWare’s recently released Star Wars: The Old Republic isn’t selling as well as first hoped, these outcries are “overdone.” The story goes on to explain that while SWTOR releases last month and passed 1 million paid subs in three days (a record for MMOs), EA has still seen a drop in stock price of 3%. This analyst group thinks that many of the issues that are being brought up about SWTOR are actually based on conjecture and says that just because…
Thoughts & Solutions to World PvP in TOR
Recent events in SWTOR have led to a great deal of conversation about PvP in SWTOR and PvP in games in general. This is an age-old debate and you can never make everyone happy in a video game, especially in PvP aspects of it. However, there are certain things that can be done to ensure a better game experience for the players and honestly, some games just severely fail at doing so. Death Fist has some ideas about solutions to World PvP in SWTOR: To be frank, no game has nailed World PvP. And some games, like Warhammer Online, died because they couldn’t provide a meaningful, competitive World PvP game for their customers. Sadly, it doesn’t look like BioWare learned the BIG World PvP lesson from Warhammer – gamers will always travel the path of least resistance to achieve their goals. Ah, isn’t that the truth? As gamers, we depend…
Server Group Forums Now Available
As we reported was soon to come, the official SWTOR forums now have server group forums available. This is intended to make it easier for players to communicate with others from their specific server. It could be an easier way to get the information that you need more quickly. Allison Berryman explains on the official forums: Hey everyone! You’ll notice that the new Server Group Forums and the Suggestion Box are now available! We configured the Server Group Forums to require you to select a forum name tag for each thread, so there is no longer a requirement to enter your server name manually – you’ll just select it from the drop-down menu when creating a new thread. Thank you all for your patience. We’re looking forward to your feedback! Allison Berryman | Senior Community Coordinator With the new server group forums up, there is a lot of talk about…
Georg Zoeller on the Ability Delay Situation
As many of you may have already discovered, there were some issues with SWTOR causing abilities on cooldown to appear like they were available to the player but without actually being usable to the player. This bug was reported by many and BioWare has an official response for us today. Georg Zoeller reports: Hi everyone; I wanted to give you all an update on the ability delay situation. Thanks to constructive feedback from the community, including some great videos, we were able to identify an issue that could cause abilities on global cooldown to appear available to the player, resulting in unresponsive/ignored player input. A fix for the issue is currently scheduled to go to the public test server with our next update. Additionally, we have located an issue that would cause player input for certain instant abilities to fail in frantic combat situations, resulting in unpredictable and frustrating gameplay…
Escapist Magazine SWTOR Review
You know how we are all about giving you great reviews of SWTOR. This is partly because we want you to hear other opinions of the game, including those from other publications and fan sites. We know that gamers vary in their likes, interests, personalities and gameplay styles so hearing reviews from different sources can help cater to those different types of gamers. Escapist Magazine has a great review of SWTOR, complete with a video, to share with you and we thought it’s worth mentioning. If you have the time, head on over and read their editorial and give the video a play-through. If you can, come on back over here and tell us what you think. Were they spot-on with their review? Anything you agree with or that you don’t agree with? Here’s a snippet: Most MMORPGs have far too narrow a definition of the term “RPG.” For them,…
Known In-Game Issues with SWTOR
Are you experiencing problems with SWTOR since the patch? Do you have bugs or issues you thought would be fixed or that cropped up only after the recent update? You are not alone and if you’re wondering if BioWare knows about it or if what you are experiencing is a common problem for others, then there is a great thread about it to keep you updated and to prevent duplicate threads on reporting issues. Amber Green, Live Community Manager, shares on the forums the known issues with SWTOR since Jan 19th: This list of known issues was last updated on: January 19th, 2012 After clearing G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator in Karagga’s Palace, if Operation Groups reset the phase, the encounter will respawn and must be completed again to progress. The Operation Group will not receive any items the second time G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator is defeated.Workaround: Players must avoid resetting the phase…
Undocumented Patch Changes – SWTOR Patch 1.1
The first official SWTOR patch came out Wednesday and with it come bugs as well as long awaited fixes. There are some little things we’ve been waiting for since launch that we finally have and then there are some other things that will just have to wait a bit longer to be added/resolved. What changes have you noticed so far? Have you found any previously undocumented patch changes? One Reddit user has compiled for us a list of undocumented patch changes: This is NOT a bug list Bank items now stack when right-clicking them from your inventory Diplomacy Mission Discovery Items now include (Light) or (Dark) in their names to reflect the morality yield of the unlocked mission. Orange social sets no longer lose their stats after logging in/loading a new area Companion starter gear has a different visual on several companions You can now see the damage of your abilities while…
Brokers Concerned about EA Stock Due to SWTOR
SWTOR is a big earner for BioWare and Electronic Arts. The extreme popularity of the game pre-launch and at launch led to great success for EA- at least from the start. All around, the company was recognized and this included with rising stock prices. However, with that fame comes great responsibility. EA has a lot to live up to with SWTOR. There are expectations not only from the gamers but also from those who have invested into the company, based on the proposed success from the game. Any sign of failure on this part will effect more than just the gamers who are playing. Recent reports of bugs and performance issues could be responsible for some investors to question their stock in EA. Could they be jumping too soon? Performance issues cause EA stocks to drop with concerns over SWTOR. This report on Market Watch explains: SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) —…