It’s time for another guild interview. Today I had the chance to speak to Tomppa from my own server Tomb of Freedon Nadd. Tomppa is guild leader of the guild Harbinger, a Finnish republic guild currently looking for active players of any class. Where did your guilds name come from? To be honest i dont know the origins of the name since i am not the original GM, but i would imagine that someone had played Mass Effect 2 a lot 🙂 Can you give me a quick 2-3 sentance description of your guild? Harbinger is somewhere between hardcore and casual, when the game launched we were pretty much an hardcore guild but since that we don’t play that much anymore. Overall we are a very relaxed guild, probably 20-30% of our mumble talk is someone laughing. How did your guild come about? Most Finnish guilds are playing on the empire side, so it was the people who wanted to play as…
SWTOR Character Sheets
Have you ever wanted to be able to share your SWTOR characters with everyone outside of the game? Want to be able to post them on your blog, SWTOR website, guild site or elsewhere on the Internet and show off your toon? Well, now it’s possible and this is a pretty nifty tool. Here’s how it came to be Spread the SWTOR looooove! A fan (Miallen) stopped in our forums with a design idea for small embeddable character sheets. Then Scorpiux and Genshen over at Cali Killed Nox (CKN) picked up the project and used Mr. Robot’s API to make these a reality. They can be embedded on any site, including Enjin guild sites, wordpress blogs, you name it. It’s one of our favorite uses of the API, along with the SimulationCraft project that imports characters. Very cool! You can go to their site right now and check it out and then make your own. Here’s…
GDC Online debuts Smedley, SWTOR and more!
With GDC Online getting closer, we’re all looking forward to more information, updates and fun interviews. That’s exactly what they’re working on to give us. The show has added a new trio of talks, featuring Sony Online Entertainment’s John Smedley on transitioning to the free to play model, BioWare on the platform supporting Star Wars: The Old Republic, and CCP on nurturing an MMO community. Gamasutra brings us full details on these new sessions: – First, John Smedley, the president of Sony Online Entertainment, will discuss how the company transitioned its entire game lineup to the free to play model in theBusiness and Marketing track lecture, “Free-to-Play: Driving the Future of MMOs.”” Referencing games from EverQuest to Planetside 2(pictured), Smedley will share some of SOE’s insights and lessons learned to help other developers successfully adopt the free to play model. With this knowledge, attendees will walk away understanding how to grow not only their player…
Star Wars: The Old Republic is GDC Online Awards Nominee
GDC Online is on its way and the votes for nominees are in. The organizers have now announced the finalists for the 3rd annual GDC Choice Awards and Gamasutra has brought us the full story. There is a wide range of games in the nominee list this year and this also reflects the diversity in the industry and the creativity of the game developers. However, we were not at all surprised to see SWTOR on the list. Some might be surprised to see just how much the game was nominated, however. Gamasutra reports: The most-nominated titles this year include BioWare Austin’s MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, which grabbed six nominations, as well as multiple nominations for diverse titles including Omgpop/Zynga’s addictive social mobile app Draw Something, Playfish/EA’s Facebook treatment of one of gaming’s biggest franchises, The Sims Social, Blizzard Entertainment’s record-breaking PC online-integrated title Diablo III, Tiny Speck’s quirky casual MMO Glitch, and more. …
Community Q&A: July 27th, 2012
This weeks Questions and answers are up. Nothing really interesting this time. Servers having trouble since 1.3 with chat lag, warzone lags and unscheduled maintenance every three or four days, but the last question makes it sound like server perfomance has actually been improved. So when you’re stuck in the login screen next time or you’re chatting 10 minutes into the future than don’t worry, the server itself is reliable! Check it all out below: Skendra: Question about Legacy! Under Character Perks -> Travel, at 1.2 there was buff for Sprint Speed but locked and now in 1.3 it was changed to Priority Transport. Why? Will Wallace (Senior Designer): There were both internal and external balance concerns about allowing players to purchase upgrades to Sprint speed, especially as it related to advantages in Warzones. We don’t want someone to feel like they have to have an optional purchase to be competitive in PvP….
TOR TV: Assassin Kills Darth Malgus on Hard mode (Solo)
Darkness Assassin taking down Darth Malgus in HM The False Emporer. Well done for accomplishing such a feat but I can’t shake this feeling of this sort of stuff being unwanted amongst the devs. Being able to solo a HM boss, plus last through enrage with only a companion healer seems a bit too much for a single tank to do. I’m guessing when this news spreads out more, they’ll either do something about soloing HM’s or nerf assassin’s, because I doubt other tanks could accomplish this feat, since Vanguards/PT and JG/SJ have no passive self healing for their stance So after roughly 6 combined hours over 3 days of attempts I finally managed to solo Darth Malgus in HM FE on my Assassin. I just feel I have to show people ;D this is one of the hardest challenges I’ve had on my tank yet (it’s relatively easy though…
An Honest Personal Review on SWTOR Endgame
There are a lot of naysayers about SWTOR these days. In fact, since the game was in pre-launch phase, there were haters who protested and insisted the game would be a massive failure. While many are now trying to say that prophecy has come to light, not everyone believes this. In fact, there are still quite a few players who are happy with the current state of SWTOR and impressed with the game overall and in general. Reddit and the subreddit of SWTOR is not always friendly to those who love SWTOR but here is one poster who had a thorough report of Here is a snippet of the review talking about endgame content: So I finally get to the max level and am ready to finally “play the game” as I would say. First thing’s first — I need gear. A bit of online research tells me that Recruit…
1.3.4a Patch Notes July 26, 2012
As you might have noticed, the servers was down for a brief time this morning were BioWare fixed a bug with crafting that certain players were exploiting. Here are the patch notes: General Fixed an issue that could allow players to gain unearned items or crafting materials.
Unscheduled SWTOR Maintenance July 26th
BioWare announced an unscheduled maintenance on the official forums today. Community News posted: We will be performing an unscheduled maintenance this Thursday, July 26th, 2012. After the maintenance, there will not be a new patch to download. The servers and SWTOR.com will be down for four hours on Thursday, July 26th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.
Alloy Inc Pursuing Copyright on SWTOR Videos
A company by the name of Alloy Inc is claiming copyright on SWTOR videos, particularly those shared on YouTube and as such, creating a stir in the SWTOR community. Several users have posted in the forums and on Reddit about these claims of copyright ownership and there was no official word from EA/BioWare on the matter. This leads to speculation and even more speculation which has some players believing it’s all a scam and others who think the company is trying to shut down user videos of SWTOR. Why would EA do this when the players are promoting the game for them (and for free)? Well again, it leads to loads of questions but we also have to remember that if Alloy Inc is under legal contract from EA to handle marketing for sites like YouTube, then they may have reason to claim copyright on the videos since they can…
TOR TV: SWTOR Explained: Sith Triumvirate (Pre-Kotor 2)
ZeroTolerence55 returns to make another SWTOR Explained video, this time focusing on the Sith Triumvirate and the state of the galaxy leading up to Knights of the Old Republic 2. We have posted quite a few video from ZeroTolerence55 before, so if you haven’t seem the already you should deffetnly do so. Yout might even learn some lore 🙂 SWTOR Explained: Sith Emperor Backstory SWTOR Explained – Revan’s Backstory (Pre-Kotor) and his involvement in the Mandalorian Wars SWTOR Explained: Revan Part 2 (Jedi Civil War) SWTOR Explained: Knights of the Old Republic Story (Revan Part 3)
1.3.4 Patch Notes July 24, 2012
Servers are back up after some Scheduled Maintenance today. The most important fix must be the Warzone group frames bug. Playing with friends became an exercise in someone counting down in vent, “Ok, click in 3…2…1…”. Another interesting “fix ” is this: Soa’s orbs, lightning balls, and mind traps no longer grant social points. And this is what happens when you abuse a mechanic, people. 1.3.4 Patch Notes General Players can now use vehicles on Coruscant in the large areas of the Black Sun, Old Galactic Market, The Works, and the Jedi Temple districts. Classes and Combat > General All class “stun break” abilities now properly remove blind effects. For example, the blind effect caused by a Sorcerer’s Backlash skill can now be broken with each class’s “stun break” ability. Companion Characters > General Centurion Weaponmaster’s head gear no longer causes non-human companion heads to disappear. Crew Skills > General The crafting…
SWTOR Community Q&A: July 23rd, 2012
Last Fridays Community Q&A were postponed and released yesterday. This time the BioWare devs answers questions about Campaign gear,class balance and other PVP issues. Chimerashot: The way Campaign gear is set up, some DPS classes have the Armoring with more Endurance instead of their main stat. Can we expect this to change /what was the reasoning behind this? David Hunt (Systems Designer): It’s an undesired interaction between the distribution of the mods and the move to set bonuses on the armoring. Future gear provides set mods will use the primary stat over Endurance for all DPS classes. Achyllis: Why don’t cool downs all reset on death in PvP? Austin Peckenpaugh (Senior Designer): Doing this would encourage a couple of things that, so far, we don’t necessarily want to encourage. When you take a position from another player or group of players in a Warzone, holding that position is harder when…
Anonymous BioWare Employee Rumor- Are Fans to Blame?
By now, you’ve probably heard about the anonymous BioWare employee rumor circulating the Internet yesterday. We saw it but I wanted to dig up some more information before bringing it to you. As a journalist, I’m not one for spreading rumors with no basis to the source. This article on Bettor.com claimed that an anonymous BioWare employee blamed the fans for the current state of SWTOR. The author, Gordon Miles says: A Bioware Austin employee has lashed out at fans regarding the state of the recently launched massively multiplayer online (MMO) Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) according to GamerTechTv. SWTOR or ‘Tortanic’ is being called one of the biggest blunders of this generation as Electronic Arts (EA) has thrown away over $500 million of development and marketing funds for the project and will now have to make it free to play because of the rapidly decreasing player count. The…
Leveling Guide 1 through 400 for Armormech
The patterns in this leveling guide for Armormech crafts are only available from an Armormech Trainer. After you complete a step, train for the next level by visiting the Armormech Crew Skill Trainer. The Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Imperial Agent and the Trooper are the classes that can use Armormech crafts armor. The primary gathering skill used in Armormech is Scavenging using Compunds and Scavenged Metals. The secondary mission skills needed are Underworld Trading and Underworld Investigation and they allow players to collect items needed to make blue and purple gear. When choosing the secondary mission skill you’ll need to use, you have to take into consideration the class that will be using the armor you craft. Underworld Investigation is used for armor for the Imperial Agent and the Smuggler. Underworld Trading is used to make armor for the Bounty Hunter and the Trooper. Reverse engineering is an option you can…
Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns on Cartoon Network this coming fall
Clone Wars is back on the Cartoon Network for the 5th season, starting this fall. If you were a fan, get ready for all new episodes and if you’ve never watched it before, there is no better time than now to check it out. New SWTOR super servers won’t be big enough when the new season of Clone Wars hit television because I am expecting to see a huge increase in the promotion of Star Wars: The old republic once the new season begins. I mean what better way is there to bring in players than by capturing the attention of Star Wars fans? The season 5 trailer brings you Darth Maul and the Death Watch battling for galactic supremacy. It’s fun, it’s exciting and it will make you feel like you are 12 again. Check out this clip and the full trailer for Season 5. TCW: Season 5 Mandalore Preview Clip from SDCC 2012
TOR TV: My Sith is a Jerk 8 Correlia’s Reckoning
My apologies my lord, But I forgot all about this “show”. It most be months since we last posted any of TheDrunkAndThePwned videos, but they are still funny as ever. Here is the latest video, and if you haven’t played the Sith inquisitor yet, you might come across some spoilers. Watching all his videos today, I’m starting to believe this one might be the best of all the “My Sith is a Jerk” videos. The crowd scene edit produced audible laughter.
Scheduled Maintenance: July 24
As usual, BioWare will take down the servers for scheduled maintenance on this upcoming Tuesday July 24. The servers will be down from 2AM CDT to 6AM CDT, and when they come back up, players will have to download a patch. CourtneyWoodsHello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, July 24th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended. This weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will be a patch to download….
Build of Master Satele Shan’s Lightsaber
How would you like to own Master Satele Shan’s lightsaber? To me that sounds like just about the coolest thing on the planet! I’m not the only one who thinks so because this guy made one for his wife. That kind of sets a new precedent for husband-to-wife gifts, don’t ya think? It wasn’t an easy task but boy is it awesome! If you’re not familiar with Sloth Furnace, he creates some amazing pieces of functional art/props. These lightsabers don’t just look pretty- they are exact replicas and they work with lights and sounds. On average, he says it takes him 6 months from conception to completion on one of these. He details the entire process in photo with captions of how he created this fantastic lightsaber, down to each and every detail. It’s pretty fantastic. It’s all from the minds and the hands of Bradley W. Lewis, video game developer…
SWTOR Scapper Smuggler PvP Guide- Understanding Stealth
If you’ve played a stealth character in other MMOs, expect things to be a little different in Star Wars: The Old Republic. The main difference is in the way you engage your target and in the stealth detection. At first, it may seem a little awkward and harder but once you understand the concept, you’ll probably enjoy the gameplay even more, especially if you like a real challenge. Engaging Your Target The way you engage your target is much different from what you’re probably used to. When you engage a single target and they die, you can restealth immediately as long as you have not attacked another target and no one else has attacked you. In this scenario, you’re considered “out of combat” when you send out the deadly blow. However, if you engage someone else or if anyone else engages you before the cool down period is up, you’re…
Individual Server Forums Coming soon(tm)
With the reduction of servers, it seems inevitable that server forums is incomming. To day we got a confirmation from Allison Berryman who posted the following on the official forums: Allison BerrymanIndividual server forums will be implemented later this summer once we have completed automatic transfers! So there you have it. A much sort after service is now coming to a galaxy far far away. Just a heads up though. If you can’t wait, you can use the subreddits already created for each server in Star Wars: The old republic
SWTOR Community Management Team Hit with Layoffs
I brought you the story of layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. This was the second set of layoffs for the company this year and it seemed to come as a big shock, even to those affected. What would you do if you showed up for work one day like usual and were told to pack it up and go home? In this economy, there are probably many readers who can relate. Layoffs were first confirmed by developer Ben Marshall, who wrote the following in a status update on Twitter (the update has since been deleted): “Anyone know of a web developer position open in the Austin, TX area? Second round of layoffs at BioWare Austin and my name was on the list…” We also told you just recently about Georg Zoeller’s departure from the company. BioWare has yet to a announce replacement for Vogel as executive producer. Also announced today: EA to…
Jedi Council Podcast – First Interview with Joveth Gonzalez Since Taking Over
Hosts Brian and Jason interview Joveth Gonzalez, Online Community Manager to tell us more about SWTOR and what he’s up to since taking over this new position in the community. You can listen for yourself here. The Jedi Council asks Joveth a little about his background and history in video games and he shares some information about the companies he has worked for, projects he has worked on and more. It’s a great chance to learn more about Joveth and the games he has worked with. He talks about how he came to BioWare and why he loves BioWare games. They also ask him about the direction of the new community team, the changes that have taken place in BioWare community team and how it all works. Joveth breaks down what the different teams do and how they bring us information as well as how they process information that is…
TOR TV: Key Binding Guide For All Classes
Having trouble setting up your key binds? Have no fear, elpoetaenmiuq is hear to help. This guys has made a great video guide on how to setup your abilites effectively. Keybinding things to keys on your keyboard instead of clicking them increases your ability to react to certain situations faster than manually moving your mouse to click on abilities. Some people don’t mind clicking and are faster that way others like myself it is easier to keybind your abilites.