If you haven’t already got a copy of Drew Karpyshyn’s Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, now might be our chance. Randomhouse just released Revan as paperback for a price of $7.99. You can order the book directly from Random house. We have previously wrote about this book, and you can read an interview with Drew Karpyshyn about the book here or read an excerpt from the book here, any way I recommend you to check it out, if you are into reading or Star Wars Lore. Excerpt: Hero, traitor, conqueror, villain, savior—the man called Revan has been all of these. He left Coruscant a Jedi, on a mission to defeat the Mandalorians. He returned a Sith disciple, bent on destroying the Republic. The Jedi Council gave Revan his life back, but the price of redemption was the loss of his memories. All that’s left are nightmares—and deep, abiding fear. What happened…
Author: Soeren Kamper
No Maintenance today
Normally we are used to Tuesday scheduled maintenance, but today is different. Community Manager Joveth Golzalez did a Twitter update to announce the lack of a scheduled maintenance: TheCantinaBand asked if this meant that game update 1.4 was near by, and Mr. Gonzalez responded with, “keep an eye on the swtor.com website!” We will keep you update if any news on patch 1.4 emerge.
TOR TV: New patch 1.4 Emotes (male and female)
Emotes are a big part of MMORPG’s. It makes your character feel more alive. F2P is gonna be like a new launch. SOME new content, Lots and lots of polish. Already seeing this with shadow optimization, facial expressions and not emotes. Cant wait for armor dyes! Nov-December will be glorious! I really like the new set of emotes, how many other MMORPG’s have they actually implemented a “mood” feature for your character? None that I can recall at least, and that is excactly what the new emotes is about, setting up a mood for your character which can be changed at any time. The new emotes (emoticons) that will come in swtor patch 1.4.0 – Male 00:07Female 02:08 – Theese emotes are based on various moods. Here you will see all of them for both female and male. The moods you will find is the following: Neutral, Alarmed, Annyoed, Astounded, Awed, Cheery, Dejected, Depressed,…
BioWare and LucasArts LiveStream Q&A Event
With patch 1.4 just around the corner, BioWare and Lucasarts will be holding a LiveStream event. In this, the they will answer questions from the community concerning the content within each Game Update. The first LiveStream Event will discuss Game Update 1.4 – Terror From Beyond, and the team will be taking questions via Twitter, Facebook, and the Official Forum. LiveStream Event #1 BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce a new monthly LiveStream Q&A Event. The objective of this new LiveStream event series is to answer any questions our Community has concerning the content within each Game Update. Below is all the information you need in order to watch and participate in the first monthly LiveStream Event. Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – LiveStream 9/21/2012 4:00pm to 4:30pm CDT The first LiveStream Event will discuss Game Update 1.4 – Terror From Beyond. This Game Update brings a brand new…
Individual Server Forums Coming today
AllisonBerryman posted an update on the forum regarding individual server forums. Finally they are arriving, so let the flame wars commence! Starting tomorrow, we’ll be opening individual server forums. This means that the old Server Group Forums will be closing, so if you have any posts you’d like to save (such as recruitment posts or other posts you’ve put effort into), please do so at this time! They had groups of servers in a forum before. Given 9 pve and 6 pvp groups and 2 RP groups, the number of groupings are going to outnumber the number of servers.
Server merges happen today, plus allowed characters bumped to 12 for everyone
We have known for a couple months now that Mega servers were on the way. We have now reached the last part of the process as BioWare merging the last servers today. Earlier this summer we launched the Free Character Transfer Program which offered players the option to transfer their characters from specific origin servers to selected destination servers. Following the success of the Free Character Transfer Program, and after closely monitoring server populations, we have now taken the next step in our on-going server population balancing process. We have upgraded destination servers in order to support a significantly higher number of players. As of tomorrow, all characters on origin servers will be automatically moved onto the upgraded high population destination servers. By centralizing our player populations on these higher population destination servers, we feel that we can offer our players the best possible Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ experience. As a…
Tips for Stat Tracking in SWTOR
While we know that gaming is supposed to be all about having fun and accomplishing objectives, the reality is that in games like SWTOR, you are going to need to do a bit of legwork in regards to stat tracking. Whether you are tracking loot, affection, or gear, you are going to need to track stats. This is doubly important for raiders. Here are a few stat tracking tricks and tips. Excel Offers More Functionality Over Notepad The two most popular forms of stat tracking are notepad and excel. Notepad is great for those of you that are not in guilds or those that don’t want to the headache of managing raids. However, for the rest of you, Excel offers much more functionality for stat tracking as you can format your sheets and workbooks for your entire guild in an easy-to-read and manage format. Set Rules for Raids If you want to avoid drama that naturally ensues in…
TOR TV: SWTOR Explained #9: Meetra Surik Part 2 (Jedi Exile and Kotor 2)
xZeroTolerence55x have uploaded the second part of the Meetra Surik the Jedi Exile from Kotor 2. story. If you have no clue who Meetra Surik is, she was a charismatic female Human Jedi Master who, while still a Padawan, followed Revan and Malak to war against the Mandalorians, in defiance of the Jedi Council. Because of this she was exiled from the Jedi Order and came to be known as the Jedi Exile. Just prior to Revan and Malak’s fall to the dark side and the Jedi Civil War, Meetra Surik returned to Republic space to face trial with the Jedi Council and was stripped of her connection to the Force, exiled from the Order and spent several years wandering the galaxy. The near extermination of the Jedi Order at the hands of the Sith Triumvirate resulted in her reconnecting to the Force and leading a desperate fight to stop the Sith. During her mission to stop the Sith, she…
Maintenance today September 13 + patch notes 1.3.8
BioWare are taking down the servers to do an unscheduled maintenance today. What the issue is seems to be unclear, bit Patch notes will be made available shortly after the servers come back up We will be deploying a patch and performing an unscheduled maintenance this Thursday, September 13th, 2012. Patch notes will be made available shortly after the servers come back up. The servers will be down for two hours on Thursday, September 13th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 4AM CDT (2AM PDT/5AM EDT/10AM BST/11AM CEST/7PM AEST). All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than two hours, but could be extended. Servers are back up. Below are the patch notes: 1.3.8 Patch Notes 9/13/2012 General Corrected an issue that caused a significant performance drop for some players after patch 1.3.7.
Star Wars Fan film: Star Wars Armies of the Fallen
If you are a follower of our blog, you know we are huge fans of Star Wars: fan movies. Back in the summer of 2010 we featured a movie by Martin Klekner called “Star Wars: Shadows of the Past” Now he is back, and deserves a tone of support for the awesome job his is doing. Check out his Concept Teaser for his upcomming star wars fan film Star Wars: Armies of the Fallen. Plot: Several years have passed since the end of Shadows of the Past. War has been raging ever since. Fallen’s revolution changed the whole Empire, it turned the Master’s realm to shreds. Fallen’s armies, though weak and unorganized at the beginning, were forged into a deadly and unstoppable weapon. Now all that’s left is to strike a final blow and confront Master directly. Created by: Martin Klekner Music by: Tomas Zemler Voiceover by: Austin McComb
Game Update 1.4 is now on PTS, here are the patch notes
BioWare have already hinted alot about the upcomming patch 1.4 with there dev blog the other day. Now we get to try out the patch on the public test servers. Seems like a ton of great changes overall. Match to chest for companions, offhand modification, new gear level, addressing the pvp gear gap, return to where you were after a lfg queue… lots of stuff that they have listened to people asking for. Check out the patch notes below: Highlights Terror from Beyond, a new Operation, is now available! Travel to the remote planet of Asation, where the Dread Masters have commandeered an ancient Gree Hypergate in order to unleash untold horrors upon the galaxy. Terror from Beyond features 5 powerful new boss encounters that can be challenged in 8- and 16- player Story or Hard Mode, offering some of the most challenging group content yet! A new set of PvE gear…
BioWare Responds to Questions on the latest Developer Blog
A few days ago, BioWare posted a blog update by Senior Designer on Star Wars: The Old Republic Austin Peckenpaugh. The blog post was mainly about class changes and balance in the comming major update: patch 1.4. With that, the forums went crazy with questions for BioWare and so far the mods have been good with a few examples on how the new system will work in the future. Read our copy/paste below, or check out the full thread on the official forum. Allison Berryman Consider the following examples under the new system:ex. A: Player A stuns the target for 4 seconds. 1 second after the stun is applied, player B stuns the same target for 4 seconds. The target is controlled for a total duration of 5 seconds. Player A stuns the enemy for 4 seconds | effective control duration = 4 seconds | enemy gains 800 Resolve 1 second later,…
TOR TV: SWTOR Explained #8: Meetra Surik Part 1
xZeroTolerence55x is back with a new video telling the back story ( lore) of Star Wars: The old republic. Finishing off the story of Revan we now see the story of the Jedi Exile which is the person you play in Knight of the Old republic 2. This is an awesome movie to check out if you haven’t played KOTOR 2 yet.
1.3.7 Patch Notes 9/5/2012
As we mentioned a few days ago, this weeks Scheduled Maintenance: was was postponed do to labour day. But now the server are back up, and BioWare have patched the servers. This time BIoWare is fixing one of my greatest annoyances since the servers merge – the unique Legacy names. Finally players are able to have the same surname as others – just like in real life. Anyways, below are the patch notes: Flashpoints and Operations General Players will no longer be prevented from traveling to their group’s in a Flashpoint or Operation due to the instance being full. Group Finder Group Finder now retains a character’s role selections when joining or leaving a group. Items General The event outfits (the Rakghoul Containment outfit and Sand People Bloodguard outfit) now bind to Legacy instead of binding on pickup. Muse Vestments no longer clip incorrectly with character heads. Helmets, circlets, masks,…
New Star Wars The Old Republic: Encyclopedia Images
Amazon now has a few more new images from the upcoming The Old Republic: Encyclopedia, witch we spoke about a few month ago. The book is due out October 15, 2012! Link Book Description Since its release in 2011, the massively multiplayer online role playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic has captivated thousands of gamers and Star Wars fans alike. Now comes the ultimate in-depth guide to the turbulent and fascinating world featured in the game — The Old Republic. Created in full collaboration with LucasArts, this in-depth companion covers the spectrum of characters, weapons, vehicles, events, and planets of Star Wars: The Old Republic. More than just an encyclopedia, it is the ultimate guided tour of the dangerous and mysterious universe found in a galaxy far, far away. © 2012 Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & ™ All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Scheduled Maintenance: September 5
Due to Labor Day, Next week’s scheduled maintenance will occur on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Check out the the official forum for more info or see our Copy past below: Courtney Woods We wanted to inform you all that due to the Labor Day holiday on Monday, September 3rd, 2012, we will be moving next week’s scheduled maintenance to Wednesday, September 5th, 2012. We will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 from 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 and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.
Developer Update – Terror from Beyond coming in 1.4
As mentioned by Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez in his forum post a few days ago, BioWare would have a new Developer update for us this week. This time Lead Operations & Flashpoint Designer Jesse Sky talks about the new Operation Terror from Beyond, that comes with patch 1.4 some time next month. Here is an interesting snip: Terror from Beyond offers five new major boss encounters that will challenge even the most highly-coordinated groups of players. In keeping with previous Operations, Terror from Beyond includes one “puzzle” encounter that really steps outside of the bounds of what you normally see in a boss fight. To defeat this new enemy, players will need to work together to repair a massive, ancient Gree computer from within the machine itself. Unlike previous puzzle encounters where the solutions were relatively easy to figure out, this one has players leveraging their particular group composition to control a chaotic situation. It’s very different…
The Dwindling Dev Tracker
Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez talks about the communication from BioWare on the Forum tracker. He also hints at new blogs incoming tomorrow? Check it out here, or read our copy pate below. Joveth Gonzalez While we appreciate all kinds of constructive feedback, as Allison pointed out, the forums are only one small measure of communication. Do keep in mind that while some days it seems that there isn’t any forum activity from us, we’re busy hopping around, taking a look at the SWTOR subreddit, Twitter, Facebook, and responding to PMs. Consider that our fanbase is large and spread across various social media sites, and you can see that we strive to make sure that they are covered, no matter where our fans are. We’re also working on some new community blogs that we’ll be posting in the upcoming week or so, in addition to our standard weekly blogs that…
NVIDIA adds native Ambient Occlusion support for SWTOR in 306.02 BETA driver release
NVIDIA is showing some love for Star Wars: The old republic in there upcoming driver release. In the new beta release NVIDIA is adds native Ambient Occlusion witch is a visual effect that was originally developed by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and used in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor. Hardware support has been available since 2003 with NVIDIA’s GeForce FX. One of the first games to use ambient occlusion was Crysis, which was developed by Crytek and released in late 2007. In 2009, NVIDIA added Ambient Occlusion as a Control Panel feature in its v185 drivers. An up-to-date list of games that support ambient occlusion through the Control Panel is given at the end of this article. What It Is and How It Works: One of the most difficult challenges in 3D game design is realistically modeling the behavior of light and its effects on various textures and surfaces without compromising frame rate….
TOR TV: Directive 7 Hard Solo
Youtube user NadaButH8 posted a video of him soloing Directive 7 on Hard mode. Pretty impressive stuff if you think of how good gear you have to optain for your self and your companion before doing this. Boss fights are played at normal speed, everything else is 2X (Bonus Boss was not attempted) Boss name–Time -Assassin Droids– 2:20 -Interrogator– 7:45 -Bulwark– 11:23 -Assembler– 16:52 -Mentor– 19:20
Knights of the Old Republic: Shadows of Corruption
Seaichfilms new psychological Star Wars fan film “Shadows of Corruption””. The film is based off the expanded Star Wars Universe of the game series Knights of the Old Republic. Darth Revan continues his rule of tyranny in the galaxy. Conquering system after system the Sith Lord comes across the discovery of an ancient Sith artifact. He swiftly aims his resources to recover it in hopes to gain the advantage in the ever growing war. Republic intelligence catches wind of the artifacts existence and head to the planet Syres to try and recover it. The long awaited live action Knights of the Old Republic film is finally here in its entirety! Part 1 has also been remastered and reinserted into the film. Seaichfilms is proud to release the complete “Shadows of Corruption” fan film to the public. “”Shadows of Corruption” is a new kind of ‘Fan Film’‘. Yes folks, a fan…
How to not suck at Huttball
The kind of people who just kill farm in mid or are generally terrible at following objectives won’t be reading this. But here is is. Basics Huttball is not Warsong Gulch. Don’t play like it is. Your team scores when the ball is carried over the opposing team’s end zone. Tie games are won by the team holding the ball when the game ends, or in the case of a neutral ball, the team who most recently held the ball. You can pass the ball to another player. Passing wins games. Passing Passing the ball is a ground-targeted AOE ability. Find it in the general tab of your ability book. It takes a few seconds between throwing the ball, and the other player receiving the ball. If no one is within the targeting-circle (an incomplete pass), a new ball spawns in midfield. This is important. If only an opposing team player is within…
1.3.6 Patch Notes 8/21/2012
Servers are back up, an here are today’s patch notes. General After a player uses the “Reset Local Phases” option, they now must wait 30 minutes to use it again, increased from the prior wait time of 2 minutes. Companion Characters Xalek Many of Xalek’s personal conversations can now be had in Cantinas as intended. Flashpoints and Operations General Using combat revive abilities now consistently returns the revived player to combat if an encounter is still active. Non-boss enemies no longer occasionally respawn after an Operation group has been defeated and re-enters the Operation. Group Finder Pre-made groups of four players that queue for Group Finder now correctly receive daily mission credit. The “Travel Now” dialog no longer fires more frequently than intended. Players now receive an error when attempting to manually add a new group member while queued in Group Finder. Items (Items and Economy) Several Imperial head slot…
Gamescom 2012: Interview with Matthew Broomberg
German Gaming site gamesaktuell.de has an interesting interview with Matthew Broomberg General Manager at BioWare Austin. Here is the highlights: First answer to question some people love it, some people hate it, what do you think of F2P… answer, read straight from the PR briefing “It brings new players, I don’t think that’s a bad thing””. Fluff…. 3:05 “F2P is not as big a deal as people make it” A lot of people make too much of the business model change. Question “no free-to-play did it withing 9-11 months”. answer “you should be innovative and aggresive”. “the game is lightyears on from where it was at launch.” They want to bring players “back”“. Some waffle about Warhammer Online. ~6:00 “pay-to-win”? “We would never want to do anything to harm the game, obviously” “vanity, convenience, that’s easy” “save time, new players, speed up levelling” “that’s a long way-a-way form play-to-win, we would never do…