BioWare took today’s server downtime to apply a small patch. Compared to the info given to us at yesterdays E3 warm up, this patch doesn’t include any game breaking updates. Check it out below: Companion Characters General Companion Characters no longer appear headless when wearing certain headgear. Flashpoints and Operations Operations Explosive Conflict The optional chest before the minefield encounter can now be looted again. Missions and NPCs General Class mission items now drop from appropriate enemies even if a groupmate deals the killing blow. Audio for cinematics no longer begins before the cinematic starts. The UI is now hidden before a conversation begins (instead of after it starts). Missions Voss The mission “Primary Target” will be automatically completed for players who finished The Dark Hollow without completing Primary Target first. Turning in The Dark Hollow first could make Primary Target impossible to complete. It is no longer possible to start The Dark Hollow before…
Author: Soeren Kamper
TOR TV: SWTOR Explained: Knights of the Old Republic Story (Revan Part 3)
xZeroTolerence55x have been busy with exams and work, so it have been a while since his last update. But now he is back, with his highest requested video yet. In this video, he explains the story of Knights of the Old Republic. If you missed out, you can see part one here, were he goes over the back story of Revan pre KOTOR and Revans involvement in the Mandalorian wars. In part two he explains the jedi civil war. Both awesome videos if you are a lore freak like me 🙂
Community Q&A: June 1st, 2012
As always, BioWare had a Community question and answer session this Friday were BioWare developers, and other team members, answers player questions. This week questoins and answers focus mainly on Update 1.3: Allies , ranging from server transfers to Legacy questions etc. Check it out below, or over at the official thread. Hi everyone, We’re back with a selection of answers to your community questions! Please note that in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we that have edited some questions for clarity. As a reminder, we previously suggested a shift in focus in your questions. As development plans are always subject to change, questions about future features will often get vague answers which can be repetitive and sometimes annoying. With that in mind, the development team is more interested in questions about current in-game features or systems or questions about why development decisions were made. You’re still welcome to ask questions…
SWTOR: Deceived Now Available In Paperback
Today, Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived by Paul S. Kemp is out for its mass market paperback release. The book was original released in hardcover last year, and you can read our review of the book here. The book follows Darth Malgus who is one of our main characters in SWTOR. Here’s a little plot description refresher courtesy of Amazon: “A Sith warrior to rival the most sinister of the Order’s Dark Lords, Darth Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace will transform him into something far more heinous—something Malgus would never want to be but cannot stop becoming, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching. Her name is Aryn Leneer—and the lone Jedi Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master….
1.2.5 Patch Notes – 5/30/2012
BioWare have taken the servers down for scheduled maintenance. The servers are still not up, and the maintenance have been extended a few times already. Do I smell patch 1.3 coming up on the public test servers? General Optimizations have been implemented that decrease instances of crashing to desktop. Any players required to change a character’s name due to Customer Support request must now make all name changes before logging in with any characters on a server. Classes and Combat General “”Heroic Moment” abilities no longer persist after players log out or transition areas. Companion Characters General Corrected an issue that could cause Companion Characters to appear without a head when wearing certain headgear. Flashpoints and Operations General Boss encounters no longer drop rewards until the entire encounter has been cleared of enemies. Flashpoints Corrected an issue that could prevent Flashpoint mission steps from updating properly if players were disconnected…
Species of Starwars: Geonosian
An insectoid species divided into castes, the Geonosians are native to the harsh rocky world of Geonosis. Geonosians construct immense, organic-looking spires within which reside their hive colonies. There are two main types of Geonosians: the wingless drones that mostly work as laborers, and the winged aristocrat, which includes royal warriors serving as scouts and providing security to the hive. All Geonosians have a hard, chitinous exoskeleton, elongated faces, multi-jointed limbs, and speak in a strange clicking language. Though labeled “warriors,” Geonosians do not have a standing military. They instead use their droid foundries to build armies for corporate interests wealthy enough to afford them—entities such as the Trade Federation and the Techno Union. Despite relatively simple minds, the Geonosians are adept at mechanical construction, and are contractors to many of the galaxy’s biggest manufacturing concerns. They are responsible for the construction of some of the largest feats of engineering…
TOR TV: Bug’s and Linedance
Searching through Youtube for SWTOR goodies I cam across these two videos. First one is another dancing video, this time by WNxJokazWild. It’s called “Bored in SWTOR: WN Style” and shows half naked aliens dancing. Not quite sure what races to be hornets, but check it out: The other video by ViralPerfection hangs out Khem Val as a pervert. I can’t stop thinking about what my companions do when I log out the game. I don’t know if it is the heat, ot the fact that we are nearing summer, but today’s videos was a little naughty. Anyways, If you Have suggestions for movie we ought to feature – other then “let’s play SWTOR” Get in contact with us.
TOR TV: Level 50 PvP Young Guns Music Video
This Video depicting current level 50 PvP gameplay in Star Wars The Old Republic on the Lord Ieldis server, is created by youtube user John James. The SWTOR community really needs more contributions like this. It’s a great and rally fun video – Body type 4 just makes it amazing :p Check it out: Interested in SWTOR Movies? We have new movies most weekdays here on swtorstrategies! Have suggestions for movie we ought to feature? Get in contact with us
Daniel Erickson reveals plan to merge into super-servers!
Here is an interesting piece of news. In an interview with PC Gamer, our main man Daniel Erickson, spilled the beans about the upcoming serve transfers. Answering a question about the upcoming changes in patch 1.3 regarding the group finder tool, Mr. Erickson had an interesting answer: From the interview: PCG: Will they be cross-server at launch? Is that planned for the future? DE: They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today. So is that how they’re going to (more or less) avoid the stigma of server mergers? Best they could do, I guess. No more low-pop servers, same-server Group Finder viable… nice! I, for one, will welcome our new super-server overlords.
BioWare layoff updates
It has been a sad couple of days for many BioWare employers as many have to look for a new job. Today we can confirm that Stephen Reid was in fact one of the of the team members who have to look for a new job. On his Facebook and Twitter he gave the following statement: Today my life’s next chapter starts. Lost track of how many chapters so far… but time to turn the page. I was one of those affected by layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. I got to build an amazing team while I was there, and miss them already. I’m also going to miss #SWTOR and the community we created. Sure, I know some of you hated me, but hey, I still worked hard for you. 🙂 I’ll be Twitter-quiet for a bit, but I’ll be back soon-ish. Doing something, somewhere, and talking about it here. I hope we keep talking. Last but…
MTSBWY: Darth Schwarzenegger
With all the sad news of BioWare Layoffs I thought it was time for a smile. Therefor I present to you a new “may the schwartz be with you”, this time with oldie but goodie. What you are about to see, is an earlier casting of Star Wars IV: A New Hope were Arnold Schwarzenegger put a juvenile, jealous and rather perverted spin on Darth Vader’s explosive personality. George Lucas had second thoughts and cast James Earl Jones instead. Enjoy these exclusive clips from the “lost tapes” archives of Skywalker Ranch. You kids are soft… You lack deciplin! ” it’s time now to turn this mush into muscles! STOP Being such a pussy NAOW!
Did Stephen Reid just get Canned?
EDIT. Yes he did. Here is the article. Yesterday we told you about upcoming restructuring at the BioWare Austin studio. All the the details are still extremely sparse, and We do not know the numbers, nor do we know of any specific staff members who are affected. Rumors are starting to spread around the internet though, as people like Stephen Reid updated his LinkedIn page to read that his tenure with BioWare ended on May 2012… Tina Wall, a former BioWare QA tester also had a few tweets yesterday worth noticing. @ChemicalPink: I am sitting at a very large table of newly unemployed people. We’ve all ordered booze. @ChemicalPink: Despite the overtones of sadness at the table, most everyone is fairly optimistic and seems to be dealing well. This article on the layoffs, the development team consisted of eight hundred developers across three cities and two countries. That’s absolutely MASSIVE team! Too many cooks in the kitchen, that many…
Coming Soon to STAR WARS: The Old Republic
Yesterday we updated you on what to expect with Patch 1.3 which will be titled ” Allies”. Today, same day as BioWare goes public with there layoffs, BioWare get a small video with a patch Overview. See what the future holds for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, as Game Director James Ohlen highlights some of the new game systems coming in Game Update 1.3, as well as some of the playable content that will be released in the coming months. In this ‘Coming Up’ video, you will learn about the new Group Finder and Character Transfer systems, as well as new Legacy Perks and other features that are coming in the next Game Update, Allies. Side note. I feel bad for him having to read off those scripts. They need to give their developers time to read over scripts before putting them in front of a camera. It makes them sound like William Shatner: “And…the new…features…
BioWare Layoffs
It’s not news that Electronic Arts was about to layoff a large amount of people in the future. It was mention at the EA conferance call. What we diden’t know though was going to affect BioWare and Star Wars: The old republic. Today we learned otherwise as the doctors posted on the official SWTOR Forums. 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…
SWTOR Armormech Orange Schematics gallery for the empire
Following up on the Complete Custom Synth Images we posted the other day, I thought it was time we posted some similar images for Armormech. The below pictures includes all the Sith patterns. Hopefully we will have all the republic patterns for you later this month. Heavy Armor, Level 11 Heavy Armor, Level 15 Heavy Armor, Level 19 Heavy Armor, Level 23 Heavy Armor, Level 27 Heavy Armor, Level 31 Heavy Armor, Level 35 Heavy Armor, Level 39 Heavy Armor, level 43 Heavy Armor, Level 47 Heavy Armor, Level 50 Medium Armor, Level 11 Medium Armor, Level 15 Medium Armor, Level 19 Medium Armor, Level 23 Medium Armor, Level 27 Medium Armor, Level 31 Medium Armor, Level 35 Medium Armor, Level 39 Medium Armor, Level 43 Medium Armor, Level 47 Medium Armor, Level 50
TOR TV: Unnecessary Bleeps – Sith Inquisitor
Back in february we did a TOR TV on Unnecessary Bleeps in SWTOR. Back then it was a trooper version. Today we have new one, this time with the Sith Inquisitor. For people who don’t know what Unnecessary Censorship is, it refers to the practice of adding censor bleeps, mosaic blurs or black bars to source materials that were neither profane or explicit to begin with. The bleeps are typically dubbed over words to make it sound as if they were explicit. Mosaic blurs and black bars are placed over people, objects, or text to make it appear as if they are covering up pornographic or explicit material. And in !@#$ing me, you !@#$ the Emperor… golden Interested in SWTOR Movies? We have new movies most weekdays here on swtorstrategies! Have suggestions for movie we ought to feature? Get in contact with us
Complete Custom Synthweaving overview
Here is a fantastic Compilation of all the Synthweaving armors currently available in the game. If your new to the game, Synthweaving is the process of fabricating synthetic materials out of crystals, various chemicals and artifact fragments to construct armor for Force users. Vendors provide premade solutions, suspensions and composites that are used during the Synthweaving process. Synthweavers can reverse engineer their crafted armor and possibly discover new ways to improve armor creating. What do you think? Do you like the sets? Were you disappointed? Will you be saving up for a specific set in particular? Already got a set and have screenshots of it? We want to see! Post us a link to your images in the comments.
David Hunt answers a truck load of augment questions
David Hunt answers a ton of questions, regarding the new agument system, in a recent forum post. Personally I really like that I can R/E green items for the augment kit pieces. to summarize the important stuff: You can add an augment slot to any equip-able green item. Augments require a minimum Augment Slot level. There are 6 tiers. You can add any level Slot to any level item. You get the materials at a constant rate from RE’ing equippable items: 10 items -> 1 augment kit. The material tier corresponds to the tier of the gear RE’d. Extraction costs are reduced 30%. Adding an augment slot using a kit costs between 4.5k – 50k depending on the tier. Other information: Augment kits can be used by anyone. They are made by Armstechs, armortechs, and synthweavers. Now to find the cheapest one to do and stock up on mats. Check…
TOR TV: How to send BOUND mods and armorings to ALTS
A while back I submitted to thenoobistcolony youtube channel. Every now and then he has something useful up there, like this one that shows you how to send bound mods and armorings to your alts. The modded item will not only have a level requirement, but a CLASS requirement as well. I.E. Items modded with Willpower will only be useable by Inquisitors/consulars
News concerning transfers and group-finder can come as soon as next week.
Mr. Stepehn Reid shared some interesting info on twitter yesterday. Apparently we are getting closer to a server merge. This is great news as many servers feel like ghost towns after Diablo 3 launched. This is not because SWTOR is dying, but the game got 280+ servers. TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY! Now, iIf you take that 280 servers then break it down into how many freaking instances and individual planets and other zones it’s no wonder the game feels like a ghost town. I play on one of the healthiest servers and I still find the population lacking compared to release. I think I haven’t fought a single Empire on PvP Warzones for the past week with my 50s toons. Merging servers now will solve the group/operations finder problem, PvP problems, lack of items on GTNs… I wonder who in BioWare can’t figure this out now. They need to merge servers if not now at…
Species of Starwars: Devaronian
Devaronians are a horned humanoid species from the world of Devaron in the Expansion Region, a planet of low mountains and deep valleys linked by thousands of rivers. It is believed that they are descended from a race of primates that lived in the mountains of Devaron, and that their horns were a genetic mutation that proved useful in fending off predatory birds. The Devaronians are one of the most unique races in the galaxy, as their male and female sexes are so vastly different in appearance and temperament. The males are docile, non-aggressive creatures, completely hairless, with red-tinted skin and a pair of large horns growing from their heads. They take great pride in their horns, and groom them quite regularly. Female Devaronians are covered in thick calico fur that ranges in color from brown to white and are hornless. They are aggressive by nature, and tend to dominate…
1.2.4 Patch Notes — 5/15/2012
It’s the time again were BioWare takes down the servers for maintenance and patch some updates. Once again we get a pretty big patch, and you can now use your full columi Xalek, and after 2 months they FINALLY fixed the rebreather mask glitch as well as alot of other things. Check out out below: 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…
TOR TV: SWTOR Class Stereotype
This video was made by ZybakTV. It is his first attempt at making a Machinima style video with voice acting. This video is intended to poke fun at some of the traits of certain classes and really exaggerate them.
TOR TV: Join the Dark Side
DarthZarato is the man responsible for this Sith recruitment video. For some reason I always get a chuckle over Stewie Griffin. Personally I think it’s about time “Blue harvest” meets SWTOR. Hopefully we will se some Robot chicken mash ups in the future also. Check it out below and let us know what you think. Also, please send over any cool videos you come across. Sharing is caring 🙂