Writing is one of the key elements to crafting a living world and few understand that better than BioWare and the vision they have for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This week’s update is all about those guys that shape the world and keep it evolving to fit the lore – the writers. This week BioWare Writer Ian Ryan takes us through the writing process and how writers continue to shape the game world long after the final piece of the story has been written. The writers continue to play the game and examine each area for subtle details that need improving. One example given is the vast improvements made to the planet of Nar Shaddaa, which has been given quite a new glamorous look to better match the taste of the Hutts thanks to writer feedback. If you’re curious to see the impact that these talented writers have on…
Author: Soeren Kamper
18,000 Accounts Compromised in BioWare Breach
BioWare has joined the illustrious club of the recently violated after a hacker gained access to a decade-old community server system associated with their Neverwinter Nights forum on June 14th. According to a post from BioWare’s Edmonton Studio GM Aaryn Flynn, hackers breached the server and may have gained access to the account details of around 18,000 users that include user account names and passwords, email addresses and birth dates. But if you linked your legacy BioWare account with an EA account, additional information may also have been compromised that includes: your name, mailing address, billing address, language, game entitlements and games played, and other game-specific account information. Luckily, the BioWare investigation has determined that no credit card information was lost in the breach. As a security precaution, BioWare is suggesting that players change their passwords. Yesterday (June 14), we learned that a hacker gained unauthorized access to the decade-old…
Stephen Reid clarifies on EA Origins
If you had questions about EA Origins and how it relates to getting your own copy of SWTOR, Stephen Reid has made a lot of clarifications on the official TOR forums. We’ll save you the trouble of hunting and sum it all up for you here. Q: Do I have to install Origin to play the game, get updates and more if I purchase a boxed copy? Reid answers: “No, you won’t. While Origin will be the exclusive digital retailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (in other words, if you want to buy it online and download it, you’ll do so through Origin) that does not mean that Origin is required for you to access or play The Old Republic. Origin is a digital storefront, and the desktop application is there to give you quick access to Origin exclusives and deals. However, you won’t need to launch…
Damion Schubert: Story Does Not Kill Community
Damion Schubert takes some time out for a long post on the official forums about community and how story does not kill it. The TLDR version: “What is going to be good for any particular MMO’s community is going to be wildly divergent between MMOs, depending on each MMO’s focus and feature set. We’re continually keeping an eye on our community to be sure that they remain healthy, but for the most part, there are some really neat interactions going on.” This is a great post to read over although commenters have varying opinions on how they feel about the topic. Some people feel the forum moderators and staff do not have the interest of community as a top priority but others feel strongly about the positive SWTOR community, stating it as a big reason they want to purchase and play the game. Schubert says they want it to be…
Cross-Faction Chatting
One question going around the forums this week was in regards to cross faction chatting in SWTOR. While there are obvious reasons why it might not be good to have cross faction chatting, there are also some reasons why it would be beneficial. Many of the RP elements of the game would be taken out if players had no capability for cross-faction chat at all. So some fans are asking if there will be cross-faction chat in certain local chat or in shared towns and cities. Many believe that local chat should be open to both sides. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager addressed this issue on the forums stating, “That’s one of the options that’s being looked at right now. As I said, a final decision hasn’t been made, and this is a feature that’s in testing. Your opinions on the topic are welcome, as long…
How To Turn To The Dark Side
Ever wanted to follow in the footsteps of Darths Maul and Vader? Ever had a hankering to liquidate a whole community of Jedis? Well do we have the instructional video for you?!! Thanks to the guys over at Howcast (who posted this brilliant video on their YouTube channel), we can now bring you this enlightening public interest film on how to master the skills needed to become a bona fide Sith legend in double-quick time. Feast your eyes on this, just make sure your boss isn’t looking over your shoulder – I’m pretty sure a desire to wipe out all the goodness in the world is classed as gross misconduct these days. Bloody bureaucrats.
KOTOR: Now widescreen with new content and customizable robes!
Thinking about trying out KOTOR before SWTOR comes out? Sure you do – if not, your missing out. If you already played it, you know how awesome it is – but here is a chance to make it even more cool. JAG from fileplanet has created a list of mods that will make the game even more mind blowing then it was the first time you played it. Here is a short run down of the most important: Widescreen Modification by Widescreengaming: The original game lacks widescreen support that brings those lovely Twi’lek females up to date. Using this file, you will be able to boost the resolution to modern wide-screen monitors. Make sure your game is patched and Steam versions follow this guide¨.. Power Overwhelming Mod by Niuhaka: Now that the game is looking good, it’s time to make your character into the gorgeous badass he should be. This amazing modification will replaces the third male Asian head…
How Stuff Works: Protocol droids
A protocol droid was a type of droid designed to assist sentients in their relations with one another, often as translators between sentients or between sentients and computers. They also possessed knowledge about various cultures and customs, in order to advise those for whom they are working, and also so that they themselves may behave in a diplomatic and culturally sensitive manner. Protocol droids constructed around 4,000 BBY (around the time of the Great Sith War and the Jedi Civil War) were frequently engineered with certain situational and behavioral shifts set to occur whenever another design-generation was reached. A number of these droids underwent radical changes with each new generation—for example, when a C7-model droid supplanted the C6 variety. Each numeric “jump” in sequence could have had wide-ranging changes in functionality and temperament during that historical period. Cybot Galactica, the most famous and successful manufacturer of protocol droids, outfited…
High Scale Beta at the end of June?
A conference call on June 14th between William Blair and company analysts and CEO of Electronic Arts John Riccitiello discussed beta testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. Certain information had players questioning the betas and what this means for a launch date. Daniel Erickson already previously confirmed there will be no open beta before launch so what exactly does “high scale beta” mean? John Riccitiello stated “we’re in mid-scale beta, we’ve got a high scale beta at the end of June.” Riccitiello added “and only the foolish assume they know the outcome of a beta in terms of whether it’s a six week hit or not.”” Stephen Reid responds to John Riccitiello’s comments on the official forum: “Take a deep breath, everyone… Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different…
Star Wars: The Old Republic- The Lost Suns Author Signing Event
If you’re going to be in or around the Austin area on Saturday, June 18th, you must stop by and check this out. I plan to be there and if I make it, I’ll pop back in here with some photos and a recap of the event. Austin Books & Comics 5002 N. Lamar Blvd. Austin, TX Saturday, June 18 · 4:00pm – 6:00pmYou can have the first issue in the new Star Wars: The Old Republic comic series, The Lost Suns, signed by the author himself, Alexander Freed. How awesome is that? This will be more than an ordinary comic book signing though. There will be an appearance from the 501st Legion Storntroopers from the Star Garrison as well as the fully automated R2-D2, courtesy of roboteer Jamie McShan! The Lost Suns is the third limited series based on the SWTOR MMORPG. It’s different from the prior two installments…
Daniel Erickson goes into detail about the number of Companions
Players have been asking a lot of questions about SWTOR companions, including how many we will be allowed to have per character. Recently Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for SWTOR, shed some light on this situation on the official forums. Erickson says, “There will be, at launch, five unique companion characters per class. Plus your resident butler/crafting/welcome home droid on the ship which is different per faction.” In his post, Erickson goes on to explain how since you will get five unique companion characters per class, plus a resident butler droid on the ship, you will have over forty companions within the game that can have more than a dozen romances, intricate plotlines and hundreds of hours of development. The possibilities are endless to what your companions can do. The storyline of SWTOR is really what makes or breaks the game so all of the staff…
Awesome Star Wars/Batman Mash-Ups From Draw2D2
Ah, the mash-up – that gloriously geeky medium that allows creative fans to show new levels of appreciation for multiple projects by marrying them together in genius combinations to create something all together more beautiful than the sum of its parts. The new kings of this world are undoubtedly Draw2D2, a collective of artists who post a series of mash-ups every two weeks devoted to two “Geeky References”, and who definitely deserve more attention for their exploits. So far the artists have mashed our beloved Star Wars up with Pirates of the Caribbean, and more recently Batman (a geek marriage made in Heaven), and the results have been uniformly exceptional. For me, the pick of the bunch, in terms of the Star Wars material is this retro-flavoured poster of R2D2 and C3PO as Batman and Robin swinging through the night sky, byAdam Carlson. The word genius is bandied around a…
Facebook Image of The Week #16
We diden’t get a Facebook image last week from the BioWare crew, but they are more then excused due to all the nice E3 Updates. But now the world is back to normal for a while and BioWare is teasing us with a new screenshot from SWTOR. This time we get a new image of the Dark Temple on Dromund Kaas. The courtyard of the Dark Temple is frightening enough to keep away even those few willing to challenge the Emperor’s decrees.
MSNBC awards SWTOR “Best Multiplayer”, “Best Sound Design” and “Best Trailer” from E3 2011
E3 Might be over, but news and tidbits are still rolling in. Here is the first E3 award for SWTOR I have seen. MSNBC awards SWTOR “Best Multiplayer”, “Best Sound Design” and “Best Trailer” from E3 2011. Check out the short video below:
Top 10 reasons to play SWTOR
Domslife did a YouTube Movie showing the Top Ten reasons I want to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. Not that many of you need convincing off course, But it is a well made video that was worth sharing. I thought I’ve seen every video, every little thing put out for this game but there were some things in the background I don’t recall seeing, namely the Darth Malgus scene actually in-game. Great video and some good info tucked in behind the reasons.
Is The Old Republic a “WoW Clone”?
According to Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz, SWTOR is just another “WoW clone”. After the hands-on at E3, Cowen slammed the game, calling it “highly derivative” of World of Warcraft. Despite promises from EA/Bioware that the title represents a major step forward in MMO design, what we saw was essentially a World of Warcraft clone with Star Wars character skins and the BioWare RPG nice/nasty dialogue tree mechanism bolted on for non-player character conversations,” he said. BioWare responds to the criticism and Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk insisted the game is shaping up nicely, and its E3 hands-on showing sparked positive feedback. In an interview with EuroGamer, they counter the accusations that TOR is just another WoW clone and describe how their game is unique, again with a focus on the content. Actually, Eurogamer says they counter it but I don’t actually see any reference at…
Brilliant Animated Star Wars Neon Signs
In this modern age of infinitely available culture, Twitter and Tumblr have formed important arenas for artists and general creative heads to post their work for wider consumption, and thank God for that. Not only has the advent of social media opened the world to the collected rantings of too many unstable people to mention, it has also served a hugely valuable service for geniuses like Mr Whaite a pop artist who occasionally produces Neon Sign style works. And even better than that, Mr Whaite usually turns his attention to geeky films when looking for reference points, leading to the three awesome pieces below. Each is dedicated to one of the three original films and prove the perfect balance between simplicity, beauty and a major geeky punch. Make sure you check them out on his site, as they are animated, and it adds a whole new level of awesome. You…
More E3 SWTOR Previews/Impressions
As E3 information continued into a new week, more preview and impressions were out for us to digest. There is just so much info out there that one could spend many hours dissecting it all and determining what is really useful and what is the same old thing we’ve already heard before. Lucky for you, I did the dirty work and reviewed them all for you. Here is a recap of what you can expect from each set of impressions: Tecca Hands-on- Too much WoW-referencing in this preview for my taste. It’s a really dumbed-down write-up that reads like it was written for people who have never played an MMORPG before. (It has a section titled “an introduction to online role playing games). It doesn’t say a lot about the game itself but keeps making references to WoW and how popular it is and the Star Wars franchise and…
Scary stuff right here
I’m a firm believer that BioWare can pull the weight of this game. Electronic Arts is “just” the publisher, The quality of SWTOR comes down to BioWare assuming EA let’s them have enough time to finish it up, however the quality of the on-going service with the servers is EA, content patches BioWare again. It really comes down to hopefully enough people buy it that they won’t have an excuse of not having enough money or something for decent server/bandwith. The point of the image is to illustrate that EA has a track record of being incapable of building, maintaining and supporting their MMORPG projects and every time close them down or throw them into stasis within a year or two.
Self-Rez in SWTOR: The Great Debate
Ever since the topic of self-rez was introduced for SWTOR, there has been debate over how it will impact the game. Georg Zoeller popped into several posts on the official forums to talk about the concept, answer questions and clear up confusions. He says: “Let’s give you some details, since it’s E3 and we’re being generous The reason we added this system is that the worlds in The Old Republic are huge and a travel death penalty turned out to be much more punishing than initially planned. Our testers were quite vocal about that. Our testers also commented that they liked the more challenging content compared to other MMOs (no, Daniel’s demo wasn’t showing that, since running harder content and talking and answering interview questions is a bit much to ask of a writer).” He goes on to describe that the system was added to…
SWTOR in Australia and NZ: Delay Rumors
While it’s been discussed before, there are new facts in the equation regarding a possible launch delay for SWTOR in Australia and New Zealand. The original source of the most recent rumor? Hex from Good Game. She tweeted: “Unfortunately we missed out on Star Wars: The Old Republic- but the game’s been delayed for Australia- probs another E3 before release.” This one simple tweet would cause quite an uproar as fans wanted to know where the information was obtained from and what it meant. Hex later said the info was via their Australian PR agent when her team was trying to get a dev interview. She adds, “Only US and Europe this year I was told” TOROZ contacted David Bass at Bioware to get some clarification on this rumor nad were told the expected- Bioware doesn’t comment on rumors and “launch regions” have not been announced yet. So with that,…
New Shots From Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody
Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we now have eight new, frankly brilliant-looking stills from hotly-anticipated (come on, admit it!) rudey reimagining Star Wars XXX: A Porn Parody. And I have to say, I am astonished at the quality. I already knew director Axel Braun was committed to making better-than-usual porn parodies, thanks to his already released work, but this is next-level work personified. Look on, Star Wars fans and be blown away… And not a penis-shaped light-saber in sight! In addition to these excellent stills, Head of Production Design on the sci-fi skin-flick Kylie Ireland – who by the way is hot enough to melt all of Hoth herself – has posted the following slideshow of images, charting the whole production of the film, on her blog: (Warning – there is a few NSFW pics near the ending of the slide) Miss Ireland goes on to offer an insight into the…
Know your Lore: Yuthura Ban
Yuthura Ban was the Twi’lek apprentice of the Sith Master Uthar Wynn, the head of the Sith Academy on Korriban during the Jedi Civil War. Even though she herself was an apprentice, Yuthura was also a lead instructor and mentor at the Sith Academy. She respected initiative and cunning in her students and was not short of either herself. Like most of the Force-sensitives at the academy, she wore the uniform of a Sith officer as opposed to robes. Originally from Sleheyron, Yuthura was a slave to Omeesh the Hutt, a cruel Master who tortured his slaves regularly. Craving vengeance and determined not to simply be “nothing,” Yuthura maneuvered herself into a position to strike out at her master, slitting “the drunken worm”‘s throat while in his bedchamber. As she fled Sleheyron by stowing aboard a cargo ship, it was inevitable that she would be discovered by the crew. They…
Daniel Erickson SWTOR Interview Confirms No Open Beta
For all of you who have been hoping for an open beta release date at E3, it’s not going to happen. In fact, what we did get from E3 is the news that there will be no open beta. Honestly, I’m not that surprised. With so many people excited to play this game and so many beta testers signed up already, there’s no need to go to an open beta to test the game. Another reason for skipping the open beta option is that BioWare wants to preserve their storyline as much as possible. The story is really what separates this from any other MMO we’ve all seen before. The story is key to the success of the game and keeping as much info about it hidden until release will benefit BioWare. In this interview with BioWare’s Daniel Erickson, he states that an open beta is not…