A long awaited question was finally answered; will Darth and Lord be player-achievable titles and if so how rare will they be? Yes. And fairly rare from what we can tell. Daniel Erickson, Lead Writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic answered the anticipated question on the official SW:TOR forums just a few days ago. The post reads: Hey Folks, Darth and Lord are ranks in the Old Republic time period and while they represent an increasingly smaller percentage of overall Sith, they are clearly not at as rare as only having one or two running around in the galaxy. There are already numerous Darths (Baras, Malgus) we’ve seen who are not on the Dark Council. It will likely not come as a surprise to most people that the titles of Darth and Lord are story-based rewards (one does not become a Darth by grinding frog-dogs) as are Master, etc….
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Do you need to read the books to understand the game?
Star Wars and BioWare are both characterized by an enormous amount of Lore and stories. So far two novels and a bunch of web comics has been released describing the characters and surroundings in the massive universe of Star Wars: The old republic. The first book that was released was Fatal Alliance by Sean Williams. The second – released a few weeks ago – is Deceived by Paul S. Kemp. At least one more novel is in the works by Drew Karpyshyn – but that is still nameless. Other then the above novels and webcommics, Darkhorse has released countless of printed comics and Del Rey lot’s of books describing famous lore characters Such as Exar Kun, Ulic Qel-Droma, Freedon Nadd and so on. Taken this into account, it’s obvious that some people get nervous that they won’t get a clue when they start up the game if they aren’t prepared. A forum poster by the name…
Another look at the character selection screen and London Hands-on Event Impressions
Even though no news sites are allowed to posts images or write reviews about the UK Press Event a few pictures has already shown up. This one was posted by Stephen Reid, who buys his contact lenses online, via Twitter just before guests showed up: I expect many interesting reviews, pictures and movies to show up the comming weeks, until then, we have to settle for the hands on that was posted on the official forums Many of you are aware of the UK Community Event we’re holding at Gamerbase, where community members get some hands-on time with the game. If you got to play, we want to hear your impressions! If you’re one of the lucky folks who attended the event, let us know how it went for you and share your impressions with your fellow community members. I know everyone is eager to hear your stories, and the whole…
SWTOR Gamers offer free guild logos for Japan Tsunami/Quake Relief
Outside of the big players in the making of this game and the industry, there has been little mention of the actual gamers and their communities getting ready to play SWTOR. Here is an example of a gamer and her project which deserves mention right now. Cerina’s avatar from SWTOR.com Cerina, a member of the Celtic Thunder Guild, started a popular thread on the Star Wars: The Old Republic community forums. She hooked up with other graphic designers and they are offering a free service to all Guild creators looking for a logo design. This is being offered for free in hopes that the recipient would be encouraged to donate to the Japan tsunami/quake relief effort. As many of you already know, Japan lost over 10,000 people in this disaster. The radiation from the nuclear power plants has leaked and has even been detected in the ocean through increased iodine…
Watch out for the SWTOR Beta Scam
The community team over at teh official SWTOR forums, have issued a warning about an ongoing Beta Scam for Star Wars: The old republic: It has come to our attention that there are multiple individuals and sites claiming to sell testing accounts, “beta keys,” or other offers of access to our Game Testing Program. All of these offers are false. BioWare is not issuing invites to Game Testing via any method other than those we outline here on SWTOR.com. We must caution you that these offers are often scams designed to steal your money, credit card information, or identity. While we understand that you are eager to participate in Game Testing, your security is extremely important, and attempting to participate in these offers could put you in very real danger. Furthermore, the sale of accounts with access to the Game Testing Program is strictly prohibited by the Game Testing Agreement. We closely…
EA retracts forum user ban
Electronic Arts has retracted the Bioware Social Network ban on a user who questioned if Bioware had ‘sold their souls to the EA devil’. As we wrote on Friday, the forum ban then rippled through Electronic Arts’ DRM system and blocked user v_ware from being able to play Dragon Age 2 at all. ‘Now I’ve got a dead game for 50 euros,’ said v_ware at the time. Despite the fact that moderators repeatedly told v_ware that the ban was not a mistake and that the Dragon Age 2 block was in accordance with the terms of service, EA now claims that the extent of the block was a mistake. ”’Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended your entire EA account.’ EA’s Senior Director of Customer Support, Boyd Beasley, wrote. ‘Immediately upon learning of the glitch, we have restored the entire account and apologize for the inconvenience…
EA/BioWare can Revoke Your Gaming and DLC Licenses for Forum Conduct Violations
Yesterday a post appeared on the official BioWare forums containing a complaint from a gamer who says he was unable to play his recently purchased copy of the Signature Edition of Dragon Age II (from the EA Store) because his main forum account (which is tied to his EA account) was suspended for 72 hours: So. My other account got suspended yesterday for 72 hours. My suspended v_ware account has all my Bioware games registered to it. My other games are Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening. I have played every game off Bioware since KOTOR, which is my favourite game of all time. Since I have these other games and off course have played the DA2 demo, my previously unlocked DA2 content is assigned to this account. When I got the mail I was curieus. I wanted to know what I did that was offensive. The mail…
The jedi depicted in the Hope trailer finally confirmed as Satele Shan.
Many people have speculated about who the girl fighting Darh Malgus in last years hope trailer is. Yesterday Alexander Freed from BioWare confirmed that the girl was no other then Satele Shan: There’s been a lot of (understandable) confusion about Satele Shan, so I figured I’d clarify a few points: First, yes–Satele Shan is the Jedi depicted in the Hope trailer. When Satele originally appeared in the Threat of Peace comics, her appearance wasn’t yet final in-game. Ultimately, we’ve gone in a different visual direction for the character, and you’ll be seeing more consistent portrayals in the future. (One of the perils of releasing information–even seemingly innocuous information–so early!) Second, regarding Satele’s age and experience–at the Battle of Alderaan, Satele is a fully trained Jedi Knight. By the time Threat of Peace rolls around, she’s had significant real-world experience and trained under several Jedi Masters, Dar’Nala included; she’s a candidate…
Daniel Erickson on Marriage in SWTOR
Daniel Erickson has posted a rather lengthy comment about Marriage in Star Wars: The Old republic. Basically he confirms it’s possible to be married in SWTOR, which is kind of a dilemma as the Jedi order has sticked rules about this. “Easy to give the official answer. But first let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Cultures change over time. They move one way then another, values shift, influxes of new peoples or discoveries change what is considered normal, etc. So if we’re strictly talking about TOR then arguments based on things that happened thousands of years earlier or later aren’t really applicable except to compare and contrast. Our views on modern marriage are not those of ancient Rome, and I doubt in 3,000 years they will be the same. So let’s talk about where Jedi and Sith during the time period of The Old Republic. For the…
BioWare’s new Senior Community Coordinator says Hello
BioWare’s new Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman has officially introduced herself on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums. Allison Berryman has six years of industry experience from Gearbox, and call herself an “all-around gamer” and a big fan of Knights of the Old Republic. You can Read Berryman’s introduction below: “Hello Everyone! I’m Allison Berryman, a Senior Community Coordinator here at BioWare Austin. You’ll see me around a bit from now on, so I’d like to introduce myself to you all. Let me start off by saying that I am beyond thrilled to be working with this community. As a huge fan of both BioWare and Star Wars, working on The Old Republic team is a dream come true. Many of my fondest gaming memories come from BioWare games, particularly Knights of the Old Republic, and to be working here is a great honor. I’ve been working in the…
Sith are evil?
On the official forums, Lead Writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic Daniel Erickson confronts the continuous question about the Sith philosophy – Are these guys evil or not? According to Mr. Erickson there is no doubt that Sith are in fact evil: “We can get into endless philosophical discussions about whether anything is actually evil or actually good but if we are speaking from our modern, western view on the concept of evil then the Sith clearly qualify.” However this does not meen that the Sith themselves look at it this way. The Sith see the republic as weak, without strong leadership and basically a bunch of mindless lemmings. Daniel Erickson also states that role players that chooses the Sith faction, has plenty of options to play as ambivalent or even helpful, should they choose to do so. Here is his post: Hey Folks, First of all, let me say that…
Zoeller Comments on Faction Imbalances
During these times of game testing, Principal Lead Combat Designer for Star wars: The old republic Georg “Observer” Zoeller, is closely monitoring the beta gamers play, to solve upcoming problems with faction imbalance. If you remember the launch of World of Warcraft, most american servers had an over wait of Alliance players, and the European servers an over wait of Horde. So far it don’t seem to be a problem though. But as we all know things might change at launch. Here is his forum post: “During Game Testing, we’ve been watching closely which class players decide to play at various times – such as: The first time they create a character 2 hours after that (player time, not real time) 6 hours after that 12 hours after that 24 hours after that 2 days after that … and so on. Imbalances are bad for business (especially for PvP), so we have a vested interest in achieving faction parity. We’re interested enough that we’ve even looked at the impact…
What Is The Max Level?
A lot of people are wondering, what is the level cap to the SWTOR? Before people believed that the level cap could be between 36 to 71 in Star Wars: The old republic but, stated by Damion Schubert the level cap is indeed level 50. Who knows if that will be the case when the game is actually is released. I guess it will leave much for expansions and it will be easier to reach that level, I’m guessing and I will play through a lot more character. And here is Gabe talking about multiple level 50 PvP:
Damion Schubert On The Death Penalty
The death penalty of various MMORPGs is a topic of interest to many people – I’ve seen a number of thought provoking posts, and what is a more cheerful topic than death of your virtual avatar. Yesterday Damien Schubert made a great post about this issue on the official Star Wars: the old republic forums. In summary, the death penalty of a game is a powerful tool which strongly influences how much risk the players are willing to take. Theoretically you could make a game with permadeath, where when your character dies, you need to roll a new one. Obviously in such a game you would see people not even daring to attack to bunny without a group. Given how many fights you do in a MMORPG, even a 1 in 1000 chance to die would be far too dangerous. In games with corpse runs and lots of xp loss,…
GameStar Magazine – skeptical about SWTOR – Stephen Reid Addresses
German Fansite We Don’t Serve Droids Took the time to do a translation of German GameStar Magazine Latest Star Wars the old republic article (GameStar XL (01/2011) and GameStar MMO Magazin (Dez 2010)) You can read the full transcript here The first article written by Petra Schmitz is the more skeptical one. They are actually two articles grouped in one big preview about SWTOR. In the first part she predicts that SWTOR will have big financial difficulties, because of the big money invested, and the needed number of players over certain time just to return the investment – the whole thing looks impossible to achieve. But I’m not worried about that part. The most important second part of the interview had some good and bad news about the game Quests According to them the story is great, the dialogs too due to the voice-over and the cinematic experience. Although they…
Damion Schubert Clarifies on crafting
Yesterdays update on on crew skills has fueled a hefty debate about the games most important non-combat activity. With yesterdays new information about the system, comes many new questions. Luckily Damion Schubert took some time to answer some last night: To be more precise, players can have up to three crew skills but only one of those can be a crafting skill. The fictional reason is that you only can have room for one crafting table on your ship, but the real reason is that we don’t want all players to be self-sufficient. We call the system Crew Skills because they are skills possessed by your amorphous crew as a whole. If your crew can go treasure hunting, you can order any of your crew members to run treasure hunting missions. Vette may have a bonus to treasure hunting (being a native treasure hunter and all), but to be honest we currently…
Mysterious Transmission From Faint Old Republic Signal
Few days ago I got a mail about a Incoming Transmission from a faint signal. I deleted it as I thought it was random spam, but apparently I was wrong. It seems like many people on the official forums plus some of the other Swtor fan sites also got the same mail The message reads as follows: Subject: ## Incoming Transmission from a faint signal… Message Body: ## Incoming Transmission from an old Republic signal… ## Initiating trace ## Signal cannot be located! ## Receiving transmission burst… “where it all began…in a Violent display, lIght meets dark…GrEat power still remaiNs hERE” YMESCJMFXZWTGYEUSGMUHLWTARYVIEMFKLSBGC ## End Transmission ## Signal lost! ## Attempting reconnect… ## Searching… ## Searching… ## Would you like to continue searching for the signal…?_ swtor-life wrote the following about it: There is a cipher that decodes the upper cryptic sequence of characters. To help you out right away, the…
Daniel Erickson on Quest Content
On the official forums Daniel Erickson made a rather sizable post detailing the kind of quest content that you’ll encounter in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This ranges from your class quests to world quests and beyond. Here’s the entire post: This one can get confusing as there is a great deal of content in the game, all geared for slightly different experiences. So let’s get to it, yes? –There is no repeated content across factions. Easy enough. –Every Class has a completely unique storyline with their own companion characters and quests that takes them from the very first level through the very last and leads them naturally into the end game content. We call these Class Quests. Now the questions and ideas that can be harder to get your head around if you haven’t yet been one of the few lucky ones to actually play the game. –“Is all your…
Wookiees won’t be a playable species
Daniel Erickson has made a post on the official forums with some clarification. Apparently, in a conversation with a fan at PAX, he said something like (when speaking about what species players will be able to play): “If you can’t imagine it making out with Princess Leia, you probably won’t be able to play it.” People got confused over that since a lot of people tend to have a pretty strong imagination and can imagine all kinds of things making out with Princess Leia . So Daniel posted: Hey Folks, Sorry for the confusion. Booth chat is, let’s be clear, not an official information release. What you got was one line of an extended conversation that was had between me and one of the players at the booth. We started talking about what made a hero in Star Wars and then, once that was clear, there were some jokes about…
Friday’s Update: Fan Friday and Blood of the Empire Issue #5
swtor.com updated with the next chapter in their Blood of the Empire webcomic: Act 2: The Broken World Chapter 1: Act 2: The Broken World – Teneb Kel has received his mission from the Dark Council: Find and slay the Emperor’s traitorous apprentice, Exal Kressh. But can one young Sith defeat a master of the dark side? And what are Exal Kressh’s true plans for the Emperor and the Empire? Jedi, slaves and Sith alike clash in act 2 of Blood of the Empire. In the fifth issue of Blood of the Empire, Teneb Kel comes face to face with Exal Kressh, the Emperor’s apprentice! But what power does she possess, and what secrets will she reveal to the man sent to kill her? Meanwhile, Maggot’s night off continues, and new faces observe from the shadows. It’s the beginning of a night full of revelations… Check out 7 new pages…
This is not the Game Tester Login page that you are looking for…
Sean Dahlberg posted on the forum in regards to the “hidden launch website“, confirming that it is indeed a game tester login page: You have indeed found the login portal for Game Testing. That said, this is not a new page and we are not ready to make any additional announcements about our Game Testing Program. When we are ready, we will make sure The Old Republic Community is the first to know! If you haven’t signed up yet to be a tester or wish to learn more, access our Game Testing Portal. And a little later he posted some more answers: A couple of quick answers: Yes, it is indeed called the Game Testing Program and not anything else. As when we originally announced sign-ups, Game testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be rolled out in several phases over an extended period of time. These test phases…