It’s been said and said again that SWTOR should have been launched with a group finder. So many players who have left the game say they did so because the lack of a group finder made it impossible to get a group together. Some have also said that if a group finder option was added, they would consider returning to the game. The memo must have made its way to BioWare because James Ohlen promises we will finally get our group finder and it might be sooner than you think. As Stephen Reid previously hinted on his Twitter, we could see server transfers and a group finder very soon. James Ohlen, Game Director of SWTOR, also took to Twitter to answer the cries of frustrated gamers. He Tweeted: “We’re hard at work on group finder and character transfer. We know how important it is to get these systems into the…
Star Wars: The Old Republic’s 1.3 Patch Revealed
We finally have some more details about the next SWTOR game update. Patch 1.3 is coming this summer (soon) and we have a bit of information to get us started regarding what we can expect from the game. IGN has an interview with BioWare lead game designer Daniel Erickson that gives us some more detail about 1.3 and what it has coming with it. Here is a snippet of that interview: IGN: The recent Rakghoul Plague Outbreak was the first world event in The Old Republic. How did you expect players to react, and how did that compare with the actual reaction? What are your plans for future world events? Daniel Erickson: We were hoping for three things: to surprise the players, to create community interaction, and encourage open world PvP on the PvP servers. All three were far more successful than we had any right to hope for. The…
SWTOR Armormech Orange Schematics gallery for the empire
Following up on the Complete Custom Synth Images we posted the other day, I thought it was time we posted some similar images for Armormech. The below pictures includes all the Sith patterns. Hopefully we will have all the republic patterns for you later this month. Heavy Armor, Level 11 Heavy Armor, Level 15 Heavy Armor, Level 19 Heavy Armor, Level 23 Heavy Armor, Level 27 Heavy Armor, Level 31 Heavy Armor, Level 35 Heavy Armor, Level 39 Heavy Armor, level 43 Heavy Armor, Level 47 Heavy Armor, Level 50 Medium Armor, Level 11 Medium Armor, Level 15 Medium Armor, Level 19 Medium Armor, Level 23 Medium Armor, Level 27 Medium Armor, Level 31 Medium Armor, Level 35 Medium Armor, Level 39 Medium Armor, Level 43 Medium Armor, Level 47 Medium Armor, Level 50
Patch 1.3 Crew Skills Changes: Q&A with SWTOR Systems Designers David Hunt and Patrick Malott
Inquisitor Roadhouse has an excellent Q&A with SWTOR Systems Designers David Hunt and Patrick Malott and has shared that with us on their site. This is by far the clearest interview/explanation I’ve seen yet on this topic and it’s well worth the read. Complete with screenshots and answers directly from the BioWare staff, you can get a clearer explanation of the Crew Skill changes incoming with 1.3. Anexxia posts: Q: On the official SWTOR podcast, we heard that Augment stations were going to be added to the game with Patch 1.3. Could you talk a little bit about what they are and how they will work? A: Our goal with the modification system has always been to allow players to use any gear they choose and have it function at maximum statistical efficiency. Most of the major itemization changes we’ve added have been moving towards this goal, such as moving set…
Intergalactic Intel: Analyzing Boss battles
“Ugh this is impossible!” I heard over the vent channel. “What’s impossible?” I was curious, what “This damn OPS boss!” I chuckled. “What’s going wrong?” “Everything!” Welcome back to another intergalactic Intel! Sorry for the lack of articles, I’ve had a busy past few weeks! If any of you remember, one of my original posts was about raiding. How to become one, and how to do well. Recently I’ve been looking at a bunch of posts on Diablo 3 boards, The Old republic and World of Warcaft boards about bosses. These posts have inspired my next set of articles, the Art of Raiding. I’ll go over, how to build a raid group, leading, tanking, dpsing and healing raids. Today’s is probably the most important one of all. Analyzing fights. Every fight is unique. Only because one fight has a similar mechanic doesn’t make it any easier. Each new encounter is…
TOR TV: Unnecessary Bleeps – Sith Inquisitor
Back in february we did a TOR TV on Unnecessary Bleeps in SWTOR. Back then it was a trooper version. Today we have new one, this time with the Sith Inquisitor. For people who don’t know what Unnecessary Censorship is, it refers to the practice of adding censor bleeps, mosaic blurs or black bars to source materials that were neither profane or explicit to begin with. The bleeps are typically dubbed over words to make it sound as if they were explicit. Mosaic blurs and black bars are placed over people, objects, or text to make it appear as if they are covering up pornographic or explicit material. And in !@#$ing me, you !@#$ the Emperor… golden Interested in SWTOR Movies? We have new movies most weekdays here on swtorstrategies! Have suggestions for movie we ought to feature? Get in contact with us
SWTOR Sith Warrior Juggernaut Leveling Build For 1.2
Today we have another post from the team over at www.swtorsavior.com and this post will give you a build for the Sith Warrior Juggernaut if you need an updated build for leveling since the 1.2 patch. First we will go over the build and then give you a bit of information about it: To use this build you should use Quinn or Vette as your companion and here are some rotations that you can use: Levels 1-30: Force Charge > Smash > Sundering Assault > Force Scream > Ravage Focus on adding in extra assaults to keep your rage up and vicious slash when you have built up enough rage. Levels 30-40 your rotation will change to: Force Charge > Smash > Sundering Assault > Force Scream > Impale > Ravage Then lastly from 40+ you will have the full rotation: Force Charge > Smash > Sundering Assault > Force…
Complete Custom Synthweaving overview
Here is a fantastic Compilation of all the Synthweaving armors currently available in the game. If your new to the game, Synthweaving is the process of fabricating synthetic materials out of crystals, various chemicals and artifact fragments to construct armor for Force users. Vendors provide premade solutions, suspensions and composites that are used during the Synthweaving process. Synthweavers can reverse engineer their crafted armor and possibly discover new ways to improve armor creating. What do you think? Do you like the sets? Were you disappointed? Will you be saving up for a specific set in particular? Already got a set and have screenshots of it? We want to see! Post us a link to your images in the comments.
David Hunt answers a truck load of augment questions
David Hunt answers a ton of questions, regarding the new agument system, in a recent forum post. Personally I really like that I can R/E green items for the augment kit pieces. to summarize the important stuff: You can add an augment slot to any equip-able green item. Augments require a minimum Augment Slot level. There are 6 tiers. You can add any level Slot to any level item. You get the materials at a constant rate from RE’ing equippable items: 10 items -> 1 augment kit. The material tier corresponds to the tier of the gear RE’d. Extraction costs are reduced 30%. Adding an augment slot using a kit costs between 4.5k – 50k depending on the tier. Other information: Augment kits can be used by anyone. They are made by Armstechs, armortechs, and synthweavers. Now to find the cheapest one to do and stock up on mats. Check…
TOR TV: How to send BOUND mods and armorings to ALTS
A while back I submitted to thenoobistcolony youtube channel. Every now and then he has something useful up there, like this one that shows you how to send bound mods and armorings to your alts. The modded item will not only have a level requirement, but a CLASS requirement as well. I.E. Items modded with Willpower will only be useable by Inquisitors/consulars
News concerning transfers and group-finder can come as soon as next week.
Mr. Stepehn Reid shared some interesting info on twitter yesterday. Apparently we are getting closer to a server merge. This is great news as many servers feel like ghost towns after Diablo 3 launched. This is not because SWTOR is dying, but the game got 280+ servers. TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY! Now, iIf you take that 280 servers then break it down into how many freaking instances and individual planets and other zones it’s no wonder the game feels like a ghost town. I play on one of the healthiest servers and I still find the population lacking compared to release. I think I haven’t fought a single Empire on PvP Warzones for the past week with my 50s toons. Merging servers now will solve the group/operations finder problem, PvP problems, lack of items on GTNs… I wonder who in BioWare can’t figure this out now. They need to merge servers if not now at…
Species of Starwars: Devaronian
Devaronians are a horned humanoid species from the world of Devaron in the Expansion Region, a planet of low mountains and deep valleys linked by thousands of rivers. It is believed that they are descended from a race of primates that lived in the mountains of Devaron, and that their horns were a genetic mutation that proved useful in fending off predatory birds. The Devaronians are one of the most unique races in the galaxy, as their male and female sexes are so vastly different in appearance and temperament. The males are docile, non-aggressive creatures, completely hairless, with red-tinted skin and a pair of large horns growing from their heads. They take great pride in their horns, and groom them quite regularly. Female Devaronians are covered in thick calico fur that ranges in color from brown to white and are hornless. They are aggressive by nature, and tend to dominate…
James Ohlen Explains SWTOR PvP Nerfs
What do you think about the current state of SWTOR PvP? I was just talking with a guild member about this earlier. The funny thing about SWTOR is that it began as a game where no one expected PvP to be a big aspect of it. Sure, some players would enjoy it but it would not be the main premise of playing. Yet now, there are many players who PvP every day and some who admit they only keep the game subscription because of the PvP. I think BioWare noticed fairly quickly they would need to rethink PvP a little and maybe even revamp the way they were doing things. After game update 1.2, we saw many changes and upgrades to SWTOR. All were meant for the better but in all honestly, there were some that just don’t seem to make sense or that cause us to question why BioWare…
Diablo 3 Launch vs SWTOR Launch
When SWTOR first launched, we were faced with a lot of bugs, long queue times and other glitches and issues. However, for the most part it was still playable. Any time a new multi-player games launches, we’re going to expect a certain level of glitches. It comes with the territory. The first 24-48 hours are especially prone to being the worst. Diablo 3 was also incredibly anticipated and it’s facing its own set of bugs. It boots you from the game every few minutes for a 3007 error, erasing all progress since last checkpoint and some people cannot get into the game at all. By comparison, many will say that D3 is worse. Some are saying that there is not as much outrage over the D3 bugs as there was with SWTOR but I beg to differ. My Facebook wall had plenty of complaints and there are loads of forum…
1.2.4 Patch Notes — 5/15/2012
It’s the time again were BioWare takes down the servers for maintenance and patch some updates. Once again we get a pretty big patch, and you can now use your full columi Xalek, and after 2 months they FINALLY fixed the rebreather mask glitch as well as alot of other things. Check out out below: Classes and Combat General The Guard ability can now be reapplied if the player dies with it activated. Previously, players sometimes received an error indicating that their target was already guarded. Sith Inquisitor General Lightsaber Charge’s audio effects no longer loop indefinitely. Companion Characters Xalek Xalek now receives the correct amount of Shield Absorption from equipped gear. Crew Skills Crafting Skills French and German tooltips now indicate the percentage chance for reverse engineering. Flashpoints and Operations General Players who advance from level 49 to 50 while near an Operation phase gate now see the gate color change to indicate their…
TOR TV: SWTOR Class Stereotype
This video was made by ZybakTV. It is his first attempt at making a Machinima style video with voice acting. This video is intended to poke fun at some of the traits of certain classes and really exaggerate them.
Jinx Has Some New Summer SWTOR Shirts
If you’ve been thinking about getting a new SWTOR shirt but putting it off, now is the best time of any. Jinx has had some very nice gaming shirts and SWTOR shirts for some time now but they just released their SWTOR summer collection and I am more than impressed. We’re not just talking about one or two shirts here, either. There is a massive collection of some really great styles for men and women. I especially love the Huttball tees. They also have a really cool Darth Malgus women’s tee: in addition to the great t-shirt designs, they also have some cool SWTOR stickers that I am looking forward to getting my hands on. Check it out for yourself- they have over 70 items in their new SWTOR summer shop.
Kudos to George Lucas – but this Time It Doesn’t Involve Star Wars
So we’re all a little ticked at George Lucas for “retiring” from Star Wars but he just did something cool enough to redeem himself- at least a little in the eyes of fans. In case you were not previously aware, Lucas has been in a battle with his neighbors for years because he wanted to build a movie studio in what they considered to be their backyards. Here’s a pic from the San Francisco Chronicle: George Lucas will not be building a 270,000 square foot digital media production compound on Grady Ranch in San Rafael, Calif., on the clear hillside (front left, in front of red roof) fronting a 174 house community seen in the background on Friday, March 30, 2012. So instead, he’s decided to build something else, something that’s really better for the greater good than a media studio anyway. He has decided to turn his large piece…
Why So Many Guild Leaders Play Tank Roles
Here’s a good MMO topic to ponder. It’s something I had noticed before but put less thought into until I attended the 2012 SWTOR Guild Summit in Austin. As we were mingling and meeting other guild leaders, it occurred to me that a great number of guild leaders play tank roles in MMORPGs. A huge percentage of the guild representatives at the Summit were tanks. I brought this up on a bus ride with Ian from Jinx who brought up a great point. He said that guild leaders are usually your Alpha players and this made perfect sense. As a guild leader, I’ve played the tank role but I’ve also healed and done DPS, many times coordinated a run or raid from those various roles. However, the traditional situation in an MMORPG is that the tank is the leader of the run/raid/instance/flashpoint. This is the person who calls the shots,…
Is SWTOR On the Decline?
Reports claim that SWTOR loses 400,000 subscribers since February. Some will say that this is a good indication that the game is dropping and that players are losing interest. But is this really true and are these numbers a good indication of the popularity of the game? It only makes sense that in the first few months of a game launch, there will be higher numbers as people try it out and share it with friends. Then the numbers will drop a little and balance back out as long term players continue to enjoy the game. Attack of the Fanboy brings us an update: Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO has seen a drop-off in subscribers in recent months, to the tune of around 400,000 lost since February 2012. Earlier in the year, EA reported that roughly they had roughly 1.7 million subscribers in February, and yesterday reported that…
Episode 4 of SWTOR News
This is a special episode of SWTOR news focusing in the current subscription numbers released by EA and what they really mean. There is a lot of talk about SWTOR, how it compares to WoW, and how it compares to other MMORPGs. This brings up the age-old question of whether or not it can be accurately compared to other games. We’ve talked about it before here on the site but I think what it really comes down to is the sheer fact that while you can compare certain elements of SWTOR to certain elements of other games, it simply isn’t accurate at all to compare the entire game package itself to another game because there has yet to ever be another game just like SWTOR. Since it stands alone in its genre for how and what content in presented, it wouldn’t be fair to make an overall comparison- positive or…
Future Upgrades to Space Combat
One thing that I was super excited about before the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic was the space combat. I was not the only person who felt quite let down by what we ended up with. I wasn’t expecting it to be EVE Online but I did expect something a bit more than what we got. The good news is that BioWare is listening to player complaints and they have many plans in mind to improve space combat and features in the future. Until recently, they have remained fairly tight-lipped about this portion of the game but recently, Lead Designer Daniel Erickson revealed some secrets in an interview with Now Gamer. ”Full 3D space battles’ topped a recent poll of new features that SWTOR players want to see in the MMO; when asked how many new features were still due to hit the game Daniel Erickson told NowGamer…
Community Q&A: May 11th, 2012
It’s that time of week again and the BioWare crew were back to us with answers to the community questions. There are some really great questions coming out lately and this time they have announced that it will be 2 weeks (May 25th) before we get our answers to the next set of questions, in order to allow for more time to fully answer the questions. They also said this week: We’d like to focus the next Q&A blog on Game Update 1.3, so please be sure to ask questions on anything related to Game Update 1.3. We have now opened an official thread for that week’s Q&A, which will stay open until 2pm CDT on May 22nd, 2012 (12pm PDT/3pm EDT/8pm BST/9pm CEST/5am AEST). We welcome your questions in that thread and hope you enjoy the answers below. So now let’s move on to the questions. nakomaru: You have…
TOR TV: Join the Dark Side
DarthZarato is the man responsible for this Sith recruitment video. For some reason I always get a chuckle over Stewie Griffin. Personally I think it’s about time “Blue harvest” meets SWTOR. Hopefully we will se some Robot chicken mash ups in the future also. Check it out below and let us know what you think. Also, please send over any cool videos you come across. Sharing is caring 🙂