The SWTOR Combat Team published a new blog post today about the upcoming PvP Economy and Ranked Rewards change for patch 3.3: 06.01.2015 PvP Economy and Ranked Rewards Restructure for Game Update 3.3 Hello PvPers! As some of you may have heard on the Bad Feeling Podcast, we are making a few changes to Warzones and Ranked Warzone Arenas. Alex covered several of these changes in the interview but for clarity, and as an official jumping-off point for discussion, we wanted to go over the changes and the reasoning behind them here. Please feel free to join us in the discussion thread linked below. Let’s get started! PvP Gear Cost We think that getting a full set of PvP gear is too much of a grind. This is so much the case that only about 2% of PvP players have a full Dark Reaver set. Having at least Exhumed gear is a barrier…
SWTOR GUIDE – Marauder Annihilation and Sentinel Watchman (Patch 3.2.1)
Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen This is the 3rd Guide for Sith Marauder Annihilation and Jedi Sentinel Watchman Disciplines I make in a never-ending struggle to always cover the latest changes with my favourite class. We all know Patch 3.2.1 can easily be called “The Broken Marauder and Sentinel”, but in every evil and sadness, there’s goodness and positivity! In this over 35 minutes long video I have shared everything I could think of. This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be added or maybe even corrected in the future if test results show better approach. I have structured it in 3 major parts: – Overview of the Changes to the Advanced Class in Game Update 3.2.1 – Gearing and Stat Priority, Skill Priorities (rotation is a bad word :P) – Personal Opinion, Analysis, Suggestions, Tips and Tricks It is the longest video guide I have ever produced. Even though some of the basics…
Upcoming PvP Changes comming to SWTOR
The bad feeling podcast had the chance to sit down with Alex Modny and discuss PCP changes comming with game update 3.3 I encourage you to listen to the podcast, as it includes more stuff then in the notes below. There are some discussions on how new warzone maps get designed from start to finish for example. Podcast link to listen (1hr long) Notes: General Alex Modny (Systems Designer) and Eric Musco are present from Bioware Most of these changes will be coming with Game Update 3.3. No new PvP maps coming anytime soon. GSF is not dead, they might be doing some balance changes in the future but no plans for new game modes or new maps. They are changing AoE in warzones – they can no longer interrupt captures. No more force storms, Death from Above, Death Field etc. AoE CC still work to interrupt captures. This change is…
Bioware need your feedback on Strike Fighters
Alex Modny took on the official forums, asking for feedback on Galactic Strikefighter expansion, beginning with the Strike Fighter class: Let’s talk about Strike Fighters | 05.28.2015, 08:36 PM Howdy Flygirls and Flyboys! I’ll be blunt. Strike Fighters need lots of love. The original design is that they are the Jack-of-All and Master-of-None but they have filled out this role too well and because of it are rarely a compelling option. We want to talk about how Strike Fighters can be made into a good option to bring in any match, by any skill level. We have some ideas of what we want to do with them but because this community is always very impressive with communication and feedback we want to get your thoughts on what you think is the best course of action. We know there are some fantastic threads and posts aplenty that already covered this information…
Maybe it should not be called Star Wars: Battlefront?
EA and DICE seem intent on breaking my heart. First there’s the announcement that their upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront title won’t feature any prequel content. Understandable. Then there was the neglecting of a single player campaign, Galactic Conquest Mode, space battles, and drivable AT-AT walkers: basically unforgivable. But I still held out hope. “This is a Star Wars Battlefront title, I have to believe…” Recently, DICE announced that the new game title will be replacing the class system of the older Star Wars games that have unlockable weapons and gear. We want you to ask yourself a question, what parts of this new Star Wars game makes you think it’s a Battlefront title? The title of the game, that’s it. Besides the fact that you will be shooting things in the Star Wars setting and landscape, this game does not have any features that made fans fall in love with…
Sims 4 Patch Adds More Star Wars Costumes
After The Sims 4 was released in September of last year, it was criticized for having little content, which includes toddlers, swimming pools, and family trees. After a few updates quite a bit has been added to the game, making it the game it was hoped to be. The latest patch fixes bugs, and adds new features, including several new Star Wars costumes to celebrate Star Wars Day. The new Star Wars costumes that have been added to the game are Boba Fett, Aayla Secura, and Darth Maul. You will find these new costumes under “Styled Looks” in Create a Sim.
See How the First Lightsaber Was Designed
You can’t think about Star Wars without thinking of lightsabers. Even non-fans will think of sabers when they hear “Star Wars”“. Yahoo Movies has an interesting piece for us, complete with video, that tells how the first lighsaber was designed. Gwynne Watkins tells us: Star Wars set decorator Roger Christian always knew that the lightsaber would be one of his most important creations. It was the Excalibur of George Lucas’s universe, the weapon that would save the galaxy. There was just one problem: He had no idea what it should look like. In this exclusive behind-the-scenes clip from the Star Warsdigital collection (available on multiple platforms Friday), Christian demonstrates how a discarded piece of camera equipment led to his iconic design for the lightsaber. Christian, who won an Oscar for his work on Star Wars, tells Yahoo Movies that the special effects department’s early designs for the lightsaber looked like…
SWTOR Temple Chair Basic to be available for only 1 credit
There is a bug with the decorations in the Deep Core/Core Worlds packs, were the decoration window that erroneously labeled Temple Chair Basic showed up. This was never intended to be in the pack, and due to this, the décor will now be available for 1 credit from the rep vendor. Hey folks, We looked into this and it turns out the chair was never intended to be in the pack, but appeared in the Decorations UI as being available from it. To remedy this, We are going to add the Decoration to the Esstran Exports Reputation vendor for 1 Credit with no Reputation requirement. This will go into the game with 3.2.2. Thanks all! Tait, Grand Emperor of Chairs and End Tables
Battlefront Third Person POV Distinction
Star Wars; Battlefront veterans are happy about the inclusion of third person POV but many are concerned with the customization options of this. It seems very few vets actually played the game from a first person POV (if you were one of them, we want to hear from you in the comments) but there are some possible issues with the default perspective of the third person POV, at least for many players. Check out this image: You can see the difference above. Battlefront vets: what say you on this? Do you want to see changes made to the third person POV? Did you play in first person mode and plan to do so again? What is the benefit or potential downside to each? Some fans are concerned that DICE will not listen to player complaints and concerns and that they are taking a “we know best” approach to the game…
New SWTOR Dev Post – Upcoming Dev Livestream June 3rd
Earlier today Eric Musco announced that the BioWare developers for Star Wars: The old Republic, will be showcasing the Yavin Stronghold and Togruta on a developer livestream on Wednesday June 3. Here are the details: Upcoming Dev Livestream – June 3rd | 05.26.2015, 01:08 PM Hey folks! I want to let you all know about our next planned developer livestream which will be happening on Wednesday, June 3rd from 4-5PM CDT. You can check out the livestream on our twitch channel,here. What we will be showing over the course of our one hour stream is some of the new content we have talked about which is coming this year. First up, we will be walking you through the entirety of the new Yavin IV Stronghold! Second, we will be doing all of that as a Togruta. So tune in as we showcase the new Stronghold and playable Species coming to…
SWTOR: Final Game Update 3.2.1 Patch Notes
Last week we posted the early draft of the SWTOR Patch Notes for Game Update 3.2.1 scheduled to deploy tomorrow. Servers are going down tomorrow between 1230AM PDT (0730 GMT) – 830AM PDT (1530 GMT), and here are the final patchnotes: Game Update 3.2.1 Patch Notes Highlights Nar Shaddaa Nightlife makes a glorious return! Head to Nar Shaddaa between June 9th, 2015 at 12GMT and August 25th, 2015 at 12GMT to test your luck on Smuggler’s Luck and Kingpin’s Bounty slot machines to earn unique prizes! General Right-clicking selected Utilities before resetting them no longer displays an incorrect number of available Utility Points. Dye Module Tooltips for the Outfit Designer now appear properly in German clients. The typo in the Season 4 Top 96 titles has been corrected. Emergency Fleet Pass and Quick Travel cooldowns for Preferred players now match the Subscriber cooldowns as intended. Modifying a Dye in an…
Battlefront Will Run at Both 60fps AND 30fps on Consoles
If you are planning to play Star Wars: Battlefront on your console, there is some good news. It will run at 60fps in multiplayer and 30fps in offline split screen, so that’s pretty good frames either way you look at it. This means console players will still get a good looking game as well as reaction time you want to see from a shooter. With the kind of graphics they have put into this (even on the console version), the fact that it is expected to play at 60 frames is good. we’ll probably expect to see a lower resolution on the consoles to help account for this but with a graphic-heavy game like this, it’s to be expected. And, if you’re curious at seeing the difference in 30 vs. the 60, here’s a handy little link that does JUST THAT: http://30vs60.com/
How DICE used Photogrammetry to Capture Every Last Detail for Star Wars Battlefront
After DICE visited the Lucasfilm Cultural Arts Museum and some of the original filming location for Star Wars, the studio artists had many pieces of inspiration for Star Wars: Battlefront. The crew had one mission and that was to return to the places where the Star Wars franchise all began. During their time they captured the basis for hi-res 3D models for the game and this was anything from huge redwood trees to Stormtrooper helmets. The major component during this process is called photogrammetry. “Photogrammetry is essentially the technique of processing still images to produce a high resolution 3D mesh,” explains Andrew Hamilton, Lead Environment Artist. “There are a number approaches to this, but they all involve taking photos of a subject in real-life and running it through photogrammetry software.” The software is given the images and then makes referenced points that are all based on the angles of the…
BioWare celebrates its 20th anniversary
BioWare celebrated its 20th birthday on Friday. Many fans were thanked via Twitter but I think we should be thanking them for making some of the best RPG’s in history. Can you believe it’s already been twenty years since BioWare began? Time definitely does fly by and we are looking forward to more of their amazing talents in the Star Wars gaming realm. What are some of your favorite BioWare games and memories from playing them?
Revenge of Revan Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II Mod
Here’s something really cool that’s ready (in beta) for you to download now and check it out. RevengeofRevan.com Developer Blog asks, “Can a mod be created that won’t disrupt KOTOR canon and still allow players to continue their stories from KOTOR1 and KOTOR2? Ever since the MMO was announced along with the Revan book, this has been on my mind. The short answer is: yes, it can be done. But the next part is, how you can do this without putting yourself in a corner and hurting your creative freedom?”” Revenge of Revan (RoR) does exactlly that. It will allow fans to continue their story based on the choices they make in the last two games so they can continue while still fitting the KoTOR canon. Even with the non-strict canon choice the story for the mod will still fit nicely between KOTOR2 and SWTOR in the large grand scheme of…
Scheduled Maintenance 27 May 2015 – Patch 3.2.1
BioWare will be performing maintenance for Game Update 3.2.1 on Wednesday, May 27th! Date: Wednesday, 27 May 2015 Time: 1230AM PDT (0730 GMT) – 830AM PDT (1530 GMT) Version: 3.2.1 You can find the Preliminary Patch Notes here, and final notes will be posted on Tuesday the 26th. If there are any updates during the maintenance period, they will be posted on the SWTOR Twitter account, as the website will be offline. Time Zone Start Time Scheduled End Time UTC Offset HST Tue May 26, 2015 09:30 PM Wed May 27, 2015 05:30 AM -10 hours AKDT Tue May 26, 2015 11:30 PM Wed May 27, 2015 07:30 AM -8 hours PDT Wed May 27, 2015 12:30 AM Wed May 27, 2015 08:30 AM -7 hours MDT Wed May 27, 2015 01:30 AM Wed May 27, 2015 09:30 AM -6 hours CDT Wed May 27, 2015 02:30 AM Wed May 27,…
Versus Series Darth Malak VS Darth Vader
Here we have another great episode of the versus series: Darth Malak VS Darth Vader It’s a Darth vs Darth battle. This should be interesting… You know how we love these videos. They are a lot of fun for fans and even if we don’t agree on the outcome, or what it should be, it can be a lot of fun to watch. So here we go for this one: If you have seen these versus videos before, you know that they don’t always end the way we wish and sometimes that is part of the fun. In fact, some fans have even complained that they are biased but wouldn’t that kind of make logical sense too? I mean, the person creating the video is going to give it the outcome they think is most likely to happen. Yes, it will be based in lore and timelines and other facts from…
STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT LEAKED INFO. CLOSED ALPHA, NEW 40-PLAYER GAME MODE & AI CONTROLLED AT-AT
I got in contact with an insider who got to play EA’s upcoming game Star Wars: Battlefront, and we got some nice or not so nice info from his play session. I couldn’t get a screenshot or an unreleased asset from the game to back this leak, so take it however you want. Keep in mind that things might drastically change nearing release as these pieces of info are coming from a really early build of the game. It was said that a closed alpha test was done directly after the game’s second reveal at the Star Wars Celebration. This close alpha test was only done for a few EA employees and it ran for a week. This makes one believe that there will be a public alpha test held in Q3 2015 if they did decide to have one, and also a public beta test about a month before…
Darjani SWGE Goes Open Source, Too
We’re seeing a trend here these days in the Star Wars: Galaxies community. Following the lead of SWGEmu, they are going open source. After a year of silence and the complete death of their website, Dajarni Emu has finally announced that they will be up and running this summer. This post here on their Facebook page explains: After long silence, here is a heads up.Currently there is a new situaion with SWGEmu, since they finally decided to go… Posted by Darjani SWGE Galaxy on Sunday, May 3, 2015 Now with this in mind, you can expect to see some good things coming to the community. As always, we can expect to see some shifts and growing pains as a game ages and as the community around it grows and shifts. This is just one more example of that. The top sites/servers will rise above the rest with the changes and good things will…
New Dev Post – Update on Win-Trading in Season 5
Eric Musco just posted on the official SWTOR forums regarding Season 5 PvP Win Trading. Apparently this practice saw a 90% decrease in win trading activity and 50% decrease in trolls. Update on Win-Trading in Season 5 | 05.21.2015, 07:22 PM Hey folks, I am here to give an update on win-trading and ranked “trolls” for Season 5. As of earlier this week we sent out another round of warnings and action against players who were participating in win-trading or being trolly in ranked play. I did want to provide some additional information besides just letting you know timing of action going out. Many of you requested that we be more up front about the action we were taking against players, and you were right in asking for that! Our aggressive action against these players along with being up front and transparent about has led to a fairly substantial change, let…
An Oral History of Star Wars: Republic Commando by its Lead Programmer
Have you ever wondered more about Star Wars: Republic Commando? As a Star Wars game fan, it’s always great to learn more about a game, especially when you can get some insider info from a programmer or developer. That is exactly what happened in this case, where lead programmer Brett Douville speaks out in this video, more than an hour and 20 minutes of oral history of Star Wars: Republic Commando. <iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jd9PkWahp8k” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe> From the description: I’m Brett Douville — I was a programmer and lead programmer at LucasArts for seven years. The last game I did there was Star Wars: Republic Commando, and in this series, I’m going to go ahead and play through the game, telling you stuff about it. I’m really proud with what we accomplished with this game, especially considering some of the stuff that happened towards…
Star Wars: Battlefront does not have classes or squads
The new Star Wars: Battlefront game will be leaving out a few typical features that you find in most multiplayer shooter games. It will not have any squads or classes. During a recent interviews that was published in OXM and was reported by Gamesradar, the design director Niklas Fegraeus states that players will be able to choose the equipment they would like to use instead of only given a few choices. New gear is guarded by XP, but you will be able to share what you unlock with your Partner. What this enables is two friends always purchasing different unlocks in order to put together their resources. Also, a higher-level player could give a new player access to their top-choice weapons in order to help the partnership. Partners will be replacing Squads, giving you only one person to help you along the way. Star Wars: Battlefront just might be a…
Kickstarter: The Recompense: A Star Wars Fan Film
Bounty hunter Jahdo Kyn gets more than he bargains for on his last job. A noir-style Star Wars fan film. Sound interesting? Well, you know how we love to bring you fun stuff just like this. Here we have an awesome fan film and you know how we love bringing you those. Above you will see the details for the Kickstarter campaign and the video will help you get excited about it (like us). What is it? Here’s some info from the campaign description: The Recompense tells the story of Jahdo Kyn, a bounty hunter, and a broken man willing to do whatever it takes to make enough credits to start a new life for himself. On his final job, he finds himself confronted by a past he thought he’d left behind, and embroiled in a conflict he never wanted to be a part of. Along the way he encounters his…
SWTOR Game Update 3.2.1 Patch Notes
Here is an early draft of the SWTOR Patch Notes for Game Update 3.2.1 scheduled to deploy next week on May 27 after maintenance. These notes are not final and are subject to change. Check it out below: Highlights Nar Shaddaa Nightlife makes a glorious return! Head to Nar Shaddaa between June 9th, 2015 at 12GMT and August 25th, 2015 at 12GMT to test your luck on Smuggler’s Luck and Kingpin’s Bounty slot machines to earn unique prizes! General Right-clicking selected Utilities before resetting them no longer displays an incorrect number of available Utility Points. Dye Module Tooltips for the Outfit Designer now appear properly in German clients. The typo in the Season 4 Top 96 titles has been corrected. Emergency Fleet Pass and Quick Travel cooldowns for Preferred players now match the Subscriber cooldowns as intended. Modifying a Dye in an Outfit Slot now clears the slot’s Color Unification setting….