Georg Zoeller is a funny guy. We’re not laughing at him, we’re laughing with him on this post in the official forums where some players seem to have complaints about the guild summit, 1.2 and what is and is not coming in the future of the game. Originally Posted by Coldin One thing that I was really hoping would come out of the Guild Summit was more information on what class balances would be taking place in 1.2. There’s been some hints here and there that changes are coming. IGN even reported that Jedi Knights will be receiving some new skills, while Bounty Hunters will be receiving a nerf. In fact, entire skill trees are changing so greatly they’re actually refunding our skill points for free. However we have yet to see any details about this. With 1.2 being pushed out to early April, it’s becoming more difficult for me…
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Jeff Woods Dev Rant
I know the below rant is old, and maby also fake, but reading through the official SWTOR forum, I can understand why developers get fed up, or just have a breakdown. Below rant is from 2004 and was all over the Star Wars galaxies forums back then. There is no evidence that a disillusioned coder working on SWG by the name of Jeff Woods actually existed, but I still laugh out loud when ever I read this jewel of a “Friday update” I think many of us can related to the tone of frustration in this article, that’s what makes it so damn good, hoax or not. Check it out below: Greetings and suck me. I’m Jeff Woods, maintenance programmer for Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided. As a maintenance programmer it is my responsibility to manage existing code, write bug fixes, integrate new code while analyzing its impact on existing functionality and be the brunt…
BioWare Wants YOU! (To Test Game Content)
It sounds like BioWare is working on endgame content. Joveth Gonzalez , Associate Online Community Manager has some good news for SWTOR fans in the Austin area: The Star Wars: The Old Republic team is looking for skilled SWTOR players in the Austin area to test out brand new content in the BioWare Austin office. We are looking for players that are experienced with endgame Operations, Warzones, and Flashpoints. Players that meet this criteria may fill out this survey and qualifying candidates will be contacted for more information. This is a temporary paid position and will require at least a weekend a month of your time. Thank you! This is really cool for those of you who live here in Austin with us- a chance to check out new game content AND get paid for it. It also shows us that BioWare is serious about finding out what the players…
Asia Pacific Server Names and Launch Timing
Are you looking for more information about launch timing for SWTOR launches in Asia? Now that the game is launching in several new territories, players from these regions are trying to learn more about the launch times, servers and more. Stephen Reid posted in the official forums about the Asia Pacific Server Names and Launch Timing: Good morning, or to those of you on the other side of the world, good morning… for tomorrow. This week we officially launch Star Wars: The Old Republic in several new territories, including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. Lots of more information on all aspects of the launch will be released tomorrow in an update to our official FAQ, but as we’ve heard requests for server names and timing, we thought we’d give you those details a little earlier. Here’s our official launch timing. All servers will be online simultaneously at approx…
SWTOR Community Q&A
For some reason we fogot to post this one. Better late then never I guess. BioWare has an official Q&A thread for questions to be answered for the February 17th, 2012 Q&A blog post. This is an effort to keep the community of players more involved with the game and changes that are incoming. It’s also an opportunity for fans and players to tell the staff what they want to see in the game or what changes they would like to see happen. Here are the rules to asking questions: Keep your question relatively short. Background details are welcome, but don’t go overboard. Please actually ask a question. We want to hear constructive feedback elsewhere in the Forums. Use common sense – we cannot answer everything, especially on far-reaching content. This should go without saying, but be respectful. Limit yourself to one question in this thread, please. You can always…
Patch 1.1.2 Causes More Ilum Bugs – Emergency patch today!
Just when you thought PvP on Ilum was fixed, BioWare came in and borked it again! Patch 1.1.2 is reported to have caused even more bugs in Ilum. The biggest issue: kills on Ilum are not counting towards daily and weekly quests. According to reports in the official SWTOR forums, this problem occurred after Star Wars: The Old Republic patch 1.1.2 went live yesterday. After some time of no response to the players, Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez came in for an update, saying this: “The dev team has been investigating the cause of this issue and they’re closer to figuring out a solution. As mentioned before, we’ll keep you updated with any new developments. Thanks again for your patience on this.” Blah, blah, blah… sounds like the same old thing that really means, “Oops, we broke it. We don’t know how to fix it but we’re working on…
Crafting Changes Live on Test Server
Developer commentary on crafting changes that just went live on the test server, as well as hints at what to expect from patch 1.2 can now be found on the forums. Georg Zoeller popped in to explain a few things about crafting, upcoming changes to the crafting systems and more. I wanted to drop some notes on the changes made to the BioChem profession in the patch (1.1.2) that just went onto the Public Test Server, how they fit in the big picture and how we are proceeding forward with crafting professions in endgame in general. Zoeller adds: It is our intention to gradually, over multiple patches, reduce the impact of situational consumables on endgame combat resolution and shift the factors which determine the outcome of combat more towards personal skill. As part of this effort, specifically for PvP, we are also working on changes that will reduce the gear…
SWTOR Servers Down on a Friday Night- Plus Scheduled Maintenance Jan 31st
Players were shocked by unexpected downtime last night right in the middle of Friday night/ Saturday morning gameplay for SWTOR. The forums went down, too, meaning frustrated players couldn’t even go rage about why they were kicked off their favorite game. Some took to Twitter to complain about it while we awaited the return of the servers and an explanation as to what had happened. A forum post explained it earlier in the day but few people caught it. Most of us were informed of the server shut down by the in-game notifications as we were playing. That post on the Official forums goes onto explain the upcoming scheduled maintenance: Scheduled Maintenance Date: Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET) All game servers and swtor.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more…
Rakata Weapons to be fixed in future patch – Not 1.1.1
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…
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…
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…
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…
Official SWTOR Server Forums Coming This Week
Allison Berryman, Senior Community Coordinator had an interesting update in the official forums about forum changes coming next week. All in all, it looks like the changes will help make the forums easier for everyone involved to use. One of the biggest changes- server forums are being implemented. Here’s more from Allison: In the layout we have now, things like Guild Recruitment and Server Events are spread out and can be difficult to locate. We’ve also seen some requests for places on the forums where players can go to discuss things more closely with others on their particular server, and for a place for suggestions for the game. To start addressing some of these concerns, we will introduce a new forum section: Server Group Forums, and will place the Suggestion Box back in its rightful place under General Discussion. The Server Group Forums will be divided by server type (PvE,…
Official dev response regarding blurry high quality textures: Shit storm incoming!
Almost since the first release day of SWTOR, users at the official SWTOR forum have raised concern about missing high quality graphical textures that was in the game during Beta. After investigating the issue, Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid responded to the problem and thereby started a tsunami on the official forums. Check out Reids answer below and follow the debate over here, but embrace yourself, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than there! Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that’s been resolved and a feature that’s working as intended, but the reason why it’s ‘working as intended’ needs explanation. First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct…
Trolling Along SWTOR: Are You Annoyed Yet?
You just cannot have a game as big as SWTOR without having some trolls here and there. If you’re in any in-game chat channels, you’ve probably encountered a couple or more at this point. You’ve probably also seen them on the forums. We also have them on fan sites and well, basically anywhere in the SWTOR community. However, there is a trend going on in the official forums that is starting to grow very annoying for many people. At risk of sounding a bit conspiracy-theorist-ish, there seems to be a trend of making BioWare look bad going on. While I’m not quite sure what the intention behind it is, I am definitely not the first person to notice it. My own friends have brought it up and there are multiple forum threads and also posts on Reddit about the topic. First is the issue of people claiming they have been…
False Bans Reported in SWTOR Community
There seems to be a trend happening in the SWTOR community for the past week or two and I have to say that in all my years of gaming, I’ve never seen one quite like this before. For some reason, there is a relatively large number of players claiming to have been banned from SWTOR- some even with email “proof” – who were not actually banned at all. Most of the reports claim to be bans over silly things that get the community and other players in an outrage because they worry whether or not it can happen to them. Accusations are flying and gamers are getting paranoid, wondering if they will really be banned for such things or if they are supporting a game company that is a little too ready with the banhammer. But is any of it really true? Like this from the official forums: Originally Posted…
Stephen Reid Clears Up Confusion Over SWTOR Bans
We posted recently about the confusion over SWTOR bans and also mentioned that Stephen Reid put word out that an official update and response was soon to come on the forums. Well, in case you missed it or you’re still wondering what is up with those aforementioned SWTOR bans, here’s the official SWTOR forum thread on the topic from Stephen Reid himself: Our Terms of Service team recently took action against some accounts playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, and we wanted to give you some insight into what happened and why. First, action was taken against a number of accounts for what’s commonly known as ‘gold farming’ – or in our case, credit farming. These accounts were found to be exploiting the game in a variety of ways to maximize their credits in order to sell them to other players. Our Terms of Service team took action against these…
BioWare founder updates us on the server Queue issues
Dr. Gren Zeschuk – Co-founder of BioWare – Made a forum post today regarding what’s being done about the queue times on some servers. BioWare is well aware of the problems and doing what ever they can to deal with it: Hey folks, as you may likely have seen in the last 24 hours, we’ve been redoubling our efforts in optimally managing the time it takes to get into Star Wars: The Old Republic. The BioWare Live Team has been carefully watching the influx of players into the game and is addressing with surgical precision the longer wait times on the small number of servers that were having longer wait times previously. We’ve also being doing our best to get every little bit of possible performance on our servers to increase capacity: we’ve “turned them up to 11” to do our very best to get you in and playing as quickly as…
ALERT: Major GAME BREAKING Bug. Don’t let this happen to you
Another game bug has been reported on Reddit and so far, it doesn’t seem to be repaired yet although multiple reports say that BioWare is aware of the issue. This Reddit user calls it a “game breaking bug” and essentially, this is the best way to describe it. If it happens to you, then your toon will be stuck, unable to continue in the game until there is a fix. It has been reported/discussed on the official forums also. The Reddit poster explains: After completing some space dailies today, I found that I had 5 pending quests and could not send my companions out on missions. My inventory wasn’t full at all when I was doing the missions, so the fact that they ended up as pending mystifies me. While still on the ship, I tried clicking on the pending quest icon to redeem the rewards, but NOTHING happens. No…
When Will You Get SWTOR Early Access Invite?
Yesterday was the big day for a good number of excited SWTOR fans. For others, the time has nearly arrived but they must wait just a bit longer to find out when they will get their early access to the game because the early access invites are coming in waves, as Stephen Reid explains. Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid posted on the official forums (which are back up, by the way) about how the waves of invites for SWTOR will go out. Basically, it will work in the order in which your preorders went in (and were registered with the code). The first people to register their preorder copies will be the first people to gain access to the game. You are ordered according to when you input the preorder code, not when you actually preordered the game so unfortunately, if you were one of those first people to…
The Poll to End All Polls: What Class Will You Play?
If you missed it on the official forums, we have the “Poll to end all polls” ( Gone with the official forums now) which discusses class, species, role and alignment. This was a really popular user-created poll that brings up some important stats about the game and the people who will play it. The poll asks “What will your FIRST character be?” and has LOADS of responses. Take a look before the forums get wiped because this poll is the ultimate poll for SWTOR. About the Poll: It started back in April and as of today, it has over 11,000 votes and pages and pages of comments. It gives us some real insight into the playerbase and what you all want from the game. This will show you who you will likely be playing with and what kinds of stats we can expect in the game. To help you understand…
Official SWTOR Forums to be Wiped on December 10th
As we continue to count down the days to SWTOR launch, we will see different changes in the community. The beta testing period is over and the official forums will be getting a new facelift. This is reported to be more than just a makeover and in fact, a total overhaul that will wi pe all the current posts and private messages.Allison Berryman has announced the changes coming to the SWTOR official forums, including the data wipe. The changes will also include a new community blog. She explains: Another new feature we’re implementing is our Community blog, which will appear at the top of www.SWTOR.com/community. We’ll use this blog for important community announcements, updates, and to post articles of interest to our community members, so make sure to check it out frequently! Sounds interesting for sure and we can’t wait to see it. But what about all the current data…
Lusinchi brings Some Clarity to Item Modification Issues
Associate Lead Designer, Emmanuel Lusinchi posted a very long revision today on the official SWTOR forums about the modification system patch notes. He says his patch notes were poorly written and that he wanted to make the post to clarify any confusion. It was a bit of wall of text, however, and I honestly don’t see how the modification system changes were so confusing in the first place. Lusinchi says: To start with, we’ve introduced a new color and item type: the Custom items. Those are shown with an orange border and are fully moddable. This change is purely cosmetic. What we have done is take all fully moddable Prototype items (blue) and simply changed their icon color. This helps us create a better and more unique identity for fully moddable gear. Ok, we’re with you so far. He then describes the main issues with the old modding system: The…
A 43-Year Old Gamer’s Rant about SWTOR
The thread, “Seriously!? (great wall of text from a 43 year old gamer)” is posted on the Official SWTOR forums and is well worth a read, despite the fact it’s roughly 1,000 words long. While it is a rant, the TLDR version will give you some insight to the game and it also makes you think for a minute before whining and complaining about SWTOR. Of course we get that it’s every gamer’s right to whine and complain when they don’t like something but then again, we have to be realistic about our expectations from the games we play these days. While I’m nearly half his age [EDIT: LOL Lisa 😉 ], I’ve been playing video games, including MMORPGs nearly as long as I can remember and I agree with much of what he has to say. A snippet: “I shake my head (but understand) at 90% of the poster’s…