Thanks to this tweet below, the rumor mill is buzzing today about what this new IP might be: Most of our core team that worked on SWKOTOR has been together throughout the Mass Effect series, and now our new IP project. #KOTOR10 — Casey Hudson (@CaseyDHudson) July 15, 2013 As the video here from Escapist Magazine shows, Bioware is working on a new IP. So of course everyone wants to guess and speculate what it’s all about. It’s not any of our old favorites or classics because it says a new IP. So what do you think they might be working on?
Datamining 2.3 PTS, Bounty Brokers Association Edition
SPOILER ALERT Since this datamine is about the Bounty Hunter, it does contain potential spoilers. Read at your own risk. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at what the SWTOR_miner has for us today: I had some interest in the Bounty Brokers Association details that aren’t currently accessible on the PTS. So here they are. An Event specific macrobinoculars and seeker droid are going to be used for the Kingpin quests. Bounty Seeker Probes – Launches a handful of bounty seeker probes to scan the area for your bounty target. Must be within designated target region Activate your Bounty Seeker Probes within the target region to triangulate the Kingpin bounty’s position. Bounty Seeker Scanner Look through your bounty scanner, allowing you to uplink to your bounty seeker probes and download any information they have gathered concerning your target. Use your Bounty Scanner to pull data from…
Summer of SWTOR Update
Bruce Maclean, Senior Producer of SWTOR, came into the forums today to give another update on the Summer of SWTOR content as well as an outline of what is coming and when it’s projected. Everything is pretty much still on target for when and how they described it before only now we get a few extra details. If you haven’t yet, take some time to read over it all and see what”s coming. Here is an outline of this post: Here is a fresh update on where we are at in terms of hitting our schedules for the Summer of SWTOR, and a recap of all the exciting things we have in the works for the months ahead. The usual disclaimer applies that all of the below dates are the dates the teams are shooting for. As you saw with Game Update 2.2.2 which had to be moved back by one…
“That’s So SWTOR!” Screenshot Contest – And the winner is…
Recently we brought you news of the “That’s So SWTOR” Screenshot Contest on Reddit and there is now officially a winner of the 2400 Cartel Coin card giveaway. The winner is Tacogoat! Her submission can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/vxzBBvh.jpg The contest host explains why she chose this as the winning entry: ” really feels like what I wanted out of this contest. The picture is alive! Lots of people being social, some guilds, some not, some republic, some inperial. Just wonderful. There’s lots of different things going on, too, but it’s still very easily recognizable as the Star Wars universe. Twi’lek Holodancers, lightsabers, droids, a Nar Shaddaa cantina… and that’s totally a holo-rancor in the back! It really just jumped out at me, but it definitely wasn’t the only one. I really loved a lot of the more cinematicly themed ones and the beautiful landscapes. So many great pictures! It was not…
Clarification on Patch Notes for 2.2.2
In the patch notes for 2.2.2 it is stated that Bioware has made ”Multiple environmental art changes have been made across the galaxy”’. Some users expressed concern and questions over this and it was brought up on the official forums by user tumpai in order to find out more about this change and how significant it would be. Amber Green, Live Services Specialist responded with a very detailed post explaining this part of the patch notes as follows: Hi there tumpai, This is actually a great question, and I’m a bit surprised it’s not come up before. The direct answer is that the note is a conglomeration of several small art fixes, and we often add a note like this to give people in the studio their props for fixing the whole darn galaxy almost every patch. These small things are not always visual, and sometimes they include things like…
Does Obama Love Star Wars?
Is President Obama a big Star Wars fan? It would certainly seem so based on recent news events this month of Obama recognizing Star Wars as a cultural event and even reminiscing a bit about it: “I remember when I first saw ‘Star Wars,’ ” Obama said during his opening remarks as he presented the 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to Lucas and other recipients. “There’s a whole generation that thinks special effects always looked like they do today. But it used to be you’d see, like, the string on the little model spaceships.” At the event, Obama awarded a dozen National Medals of Arts as well as another dozen National Humanities Medals. These “extraordinary men and women” have used their talents “to open up minds and nourish souls and help us understand what it means to be human and what it means to be an American,” Obama…
TOR TV: How to Keybind/Interface Edit
RiyonnaSaysRawr·made this tutorial on how to keybind and edit your interface. Most people who have been playing the game for a while already know this, but if you are new to the game, or MMORPG’s in general, this is a good little video. As she writes on reddit: Often I see people who don’t know how to keybind, sometimes they don’t know how to add quickbars either. Usually I see them on General chat, most of the time ‘complaining’ about losing in PvP because someone is ‘jumping around like crazy and I can’t hit them’, sometimes they’re saying they have good gear so they should be winning, so something always looks a bit off and I ask them if they keybind, they say no and don’t know what it is. It’s a little tasking to explain it because they can’t always find it so I made a quick video about it,…
Consolidated Bugs Update
Amber Green posted 5 updated on the forums regarding know bugs. I’m not sure if this is new bugs found after the patch today, or theese are older bugs that the team just want’s to let us know that they are aware of. It’s good that they communicating this stuff out the the players though. Check out all 5 posts below: Post 1 AmberGreen Achievement Tracking Permanmently Stuck | 07.16.2013, 08:57 AM Hello folks! Thanks again for your patience while this issue has been researched on our side. We’ve discovered a solution for those Achievements that are stuck in the tracker, and we’d like to be sure that we don’t miss any! Currently, we’ve got Javaal Fleet Action Mastery and Saleucami Fleet Action Mastery as being stuck. Please post here if you have any additional Achievements that are stuck in your tracker so that we can be sure they get…
KOTOR is 10 Years Old- SWTOR and Bioware Celebrate
July 15th marks the 10-year anniversary for Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ (KOTOR™). Bioware and fans across the globe are celebrating today and we want to bring you a roundup of some of the great posts, stories and interviews of the big day. The Game Agent Blog brings us 10 Years of KOTOR: An Interview with Lead Designer James Ohlen which interviews KOTOR Lead Designer James Ohlen from BioWare about his experience on KOTOR. Here is a snippet: Jon Carr: Can you introduce yourself to our readers and explain the role you had in creating Knights Of The Old Republic? James Ohlen: My name is James Ohlen. Currently I’m a VP/Studio Creative Director at EA/Bioware. I’ve worked as Game Director on Star Wars: The Old Republic as well as lead designer on Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age: Origins. I was the lead designer on Star Wars:…
EA Makes Deal with Hasbro on Star Wars Toys
This was an interesting week for Electronic Arts after an agreement that would improve their stock value slightly. EA made a deal with very popular toy company Hasbro regarding the manufacture and sale of Star Wars toys ( And all EA Games) . With the new movies and everything else in the works, you know these toys are going to end up being very profitable and popular. The Motley Fool explains: On Tuesday, both Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS ) and Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA ) stock rose slightly after the companies announced a new four-year agreement, under which EA will develop mobile games based on several of Hasbro’s most popular gaming brands. The deal, which extends the scope and length of an existing six-year agreement, will include new mobile versions of Hasbro’s Monopoly, Scrabble, The Game of Life, Battleship,Boggle, Clue, Risk, and Yahtzee. For those of you keeping track, this is the second third-party content licensing agreement announced by EA in as many months. If you recall,…
Maintenance: July 16th, 2013 + Patch Notes
BioWare will be taking down the servers tomorrow to perform maintenance. At the same time Patch 2.2.2a will be implemented Check out the official announcement and patch notes below. Maintenance: July 16th, 2013 | 07.15.2013, 08:36 AM On July 16th, all game servers will be unavailable as we perform maintenance. Patch 2.2.2a will be implemented during this downtime. Details are as follows: Date: Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 Duration: 4 hours Time: 3AM PDT (10AM UTC) to 7AM PDT (2PM UTC) Patch Notes Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. Below are the patch notes: 2.2.2a Patch Notes – 7/16/2013 Cartel Market Using a Character Rename Item no longer consumes the item without granting a rename in some circumstances. General Jumping without a weapon drawn will now animate properly. UI The Chat Window now fades as intended due to inactivity and retains settings…
Latest 2.3PTS Datamining
We love to bring you data mine info because it’s fun and interesting to speculate about what might make it into the game. As always, remember that this might contains spoilers, this is not official SWTOR news and we don’t actually know if any of this info will end up live in the game. With that said, let’s check it out! Here is some new info about 2.3 PTS data mined files a well as some corrections: Well it’s that time again. Going through the files I found artwork for new companion customizations for Qyzen, Skadge, Sgt. Rusk, Gault, Xalek, Ashara, and Yuun. Can’t really show them to you, as I haven’t had time to play around with character/npc models. They don’t have associated item entries, so they’re probably a little ways out. Apparently these went live with 2.2.2, and were body skins for existing customizations. Yay, for small fixes! Treek…
MTSBWY: Billy Dee and Patton Oswalt do ‘Star Wars’ karaoke
I’ve seen some ludicrously funny things in my day, but this is really a piece of work. This is just one of those things you have to experience to believe. I guess the video is an ad for Samsung’s Galaxy S4, and it features Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) hitting up Karaoke Night at the Cantina on Tatooine. Lando performs a embarrassingly bad rendition of Jason Schwartzman‘s song, “West Coast.” The video also features appearances by Schwartzman, Patton Oswalt, Carrie Keagan, Chris Hardwick, and Mike Phirman. Check the weirdness out.
SWTOR Mid-term Report Card
Have you been playing SWTOR since the beginning? Those of us early adopters, beta testers and long time fans have seen a lot of changes over the years and months. While there were some bumps along the way, they’ve really shaped up with a lot of new content and features. Massively took a review-style look at where SWTOR is today. Massively’s Larry Everett writes: Well, we are about six months into the second year of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The first year was fraught with high expectations and slow delivery. Many failed attempts at greatness made the first year of SWTOR a bit of a downer. However, in this second year, in light of the ever-changing market of MMORPGs, the Star Wars MMO took steps to put itself on a better path. Using the Bartle Test as my litmus test, I will break down and grade this year’s performance so far. He…
Official Forums Class Representatives Announced
Eric Musco posted an interesting update to the official SWTOR forums yesterday. We will now be getting class representatives for the forums. Each representative will only serve for a term and then new representatives will take their places so it ensures there is some balance and rotation. Class Representatives are player elected and will not be granted any special access to the BioWare team. They will be used to help Bioware staff provide more information and community involvement on the topic of classes within SWTOR. What tasks will these forum class representatives do? What Will They Do? Upon the Class representatives being selected, we will release a schedule. On each scheduled date listed, the chosen representative for each Class will make a forum post in their Class forum with the top 3 things they want to have answered or commented on. Our current plan is to do 4 ACs each…
Playtesting for SWGEmu – What You Should Know
Have you played SWGEmu yet? We’re looking for your thoughts on it as Star Wars and SWG fans. Late last year I wrote a post about the SWG emulator and what SWG fans could expect from it. Guest Tosche Station actually posted a comment to that original article recently that we thought deserved its own post since it was so lengthy and well thought-out. You can see the original comment here: If anyone reading has an interest in playtesting for SWGEmu, there are a few things you should keep in mind; 1). If you’re never played Star Wars Galaxies at all, you’re gonna have a bad time. The SWGEMU community is comprised of diehard SWG players who put on a good show of being friendly and helpful, until you start asking questions they don’t know the answers to. Then you’ll discover just how insular the SWGEMU community is, and the fact…
TORPARSE to Close 27 July
TORPARSE had one simple mission: to provide the best and easiest to use combat log parser for Star Wars: The Old Republic. But now, they will be closing their doors forever. In an announcement made July 10th, TORPARSE explained that they will soon be shutting down the site. It is a sad and bittersweet announcement as the site has been such a useful tool for SWTOR players for all of this time. Here s a snippet of that End of Service Announcement: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 End of Service Announcement Hey everybody, I’ve got some bad news today. I’ve been struggling with this decision for a few months now, but have made a decision to end the TORParse project effective 27 July 2013. I’ve had a lot of fun developing this project and working with the community the last year and a half, but have ultimately made the decision to…
Game Update 2.2.2 Patch Notes – 7/10/2013
Servers are down for maintenance, and when they will be back, you need to download game update 2.2.2. Below are the patch notes: Highlights New Content! Nightmare Mode is now available for the Scum and Villainy Operation. New Vehicles!Two new vehicles are now available: The Titan 6 Containment Vehicle The Tirsa Champion Landspeeder New Title! To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Knights of the Old Republic™, the “Revan’s Heir” Title will be available on the Cartel Market for 24 hours only beginning on July 15th at 12AM PDT/7AM UTC. Cartel Market General The tooltips for all Encrypted Datacubes have been updated to clearly indicate that the items grant a mission which can only be completed once per character. New Items New Title! To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Knights of the Old Republic, the “Revan’s Heir” Title will be purchasable on the Cartel Market for 24 hours only…
SWTOR PTS Update 7/9
The public test servers are now updated with the new Daily Area CZ-198. Players have already found a few interesting features such as the new HK-51 customization available there. PTS Update – 7/10 | 07.09.2013, 01:46 PM The PTS is now available for testing Game Update 2.3 content! Patch Note: Players are now able to travel to Daily Area CZ-198. Thanks for your participation!
Official Blog: A Letter from Special Executive Rasmus Blys
A BioWare corporation PR person was RP’ing a corporation PR person in yesterdays blog post. I guess that’s something they can write convincingly! They really nailed the sugarcoated corporate jargon at least, as Special Executive Rasmus Blys from the Czerka Corporation took on the official website yesterday. Check out the full “blog post ” over at the official site, our our copy paste below. Also remember to check our faction lore guide on Czerka Corporation if you are into the lore behind them. 07.08.2013 A Letter from Special Executive Rasmus Blys Greetings! My name is Rasmus Blys, and I have the great honor of serving as a Special Executive for the Czerka Corporation: the most dynamic business entity in the entirety of known space. Czerka’s history is a long and storied one; we have centuries of innovation and success to look back on, with entire worlds owing their economic and social development to our valuable…
Scheduled Maintenance: July 10th, 2013
BioWare will performing scheduled maintenance tomorrow July 10th. While servers are down, the team will implement Game Update 2.2.2. We will post the patch notes as soon as they are available. On July 10th, all game servers, SWTOR.com, and the launcher, will be unavailable as we perform scheduled maintenance. Game Update 2.2.2 will be implemented during this downtime. Details are as follows: Date: Wednesday July 10th, 2013 Duration: 4 hours Time: 3AM PDT (10AM UTC) – 7AM (2PM UTC) Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. In addition to this, Amber Also updated the forums about an update on the bug that makes it impossible to travel to the new daily area, CZ-198. Hi folks! So that you know, we are planning an update tomorrow to correct this issue. Please keep your eye out for more information as to when we’ll be…
The Old Republic Insider – July 2013
The Old Republic Insider for July 2013 is here! In this episode, we learn about upcoming game content as well as what we can expect to see on the market in the future. There’s a new event: The Bounty Contract Week which will take place monthly, at the beginning of the month. So if you happen to miss one- no worries, as you will get a chance again the next month. Also in August, comes Game Update 2.3 Titans of Industry. Here’s a snippet of what to expect from this update and the Czerka Corporation: WE ARE THE GALAXY’S MOST TRUSTED BRAND For centuries, Czerka Corporation has led the industry in weapons design, Droid manufacturing, biological research, and much more. Here at our facilities on the private moon, CZ-198, we consider ourselves the heart of the Czerka Corporation. With state of the art labs and dedicated, robust R&D teams, CZ-198 continues…
The “That’s So SWTOR!” Screenshot Contest – 2400 Cartel Coin Card Giveaway!
What do you see when you first think of SWTOR? What if you had a chance to win 2400 Cartel Coins by sharing a screenshot that makes you think “That’s so SWTOR!” You can learn more from the Community post here on Reddit: Community Post | The “That’s So SWTOR!” Screenshot Contest – 2400 Cartel Coin Card Giveaway! | 7/5/13 Howdy guys! As mentioned last Friday, I’m starting a contest today to find the single most SWTOR screenshot. What does that mean? Well, it means that I want to see what SWTOR means to you! What screenshot have you taken that really remind you of everything that SWTOR is to you. Here are the rules: You can submit up to 3 pictures, but please only make one post. You can vote on submissions, but I will be choosing the winner, so don’t bother trying to downvote other peoples’ submissions. I…
Star Wars Shakespeare: A New Hope Gets a New Format
If you love Star Wars but are reluctant to dive into the works of Shakespeare, Ian Doescher has just the book to ease you in to the verses of the Bard. Dolscher’s takes Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope back in time to the 1600s. Apparently, the project is George Lucas sanctioned, according to Get The Big Picture. The Star Wars creator has reportedly told Doescher he should take the project as far as possible. Perhaps this means we will see the other five episodes given the Hamlettreatment. Along with references to the Elithabethan author, the book also features period style images, including one with Luke holding a storm trooper’s helmet like a skull. “The allusions to Shakespeare’s works are references I carry around in my head, so most often the allusions to plays flowed naturally with a particular character’s dialogue. Other times, the references were more carefully planned,” Doescher told Quirk. “”For instance, I knew…