There has been news just recently that ActiVision Blizzardhad to make some layoffs. They have cut 600 employees from their BlizzardEntertainment Unit, the department that runs the popular MMO, World ofWarcraft. While Blizzard justified that the staff reductions are insync with its current organizational needs, the layoffs have many in the gamingcommunities buzzing about the state of WoW and whether or not other games (suchas SWTOR) are contributing to its decline. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone talking about SWTORnot mention WoW. Players, guild leaders and even SWTOR’s own dev team findthemselves slipping up and using WoW terminology when discussing the game. So manyof us played WoW for such a long time (and many still do) that it’s hard not tomake comparisons between the two. However, do these statistics and layoffs mean that SWTOR iskilling WoW? Not directly, no. The game has been on a decline since thebeginning of 2011…
ChewUI Coming Soon!
If you’re as excited as us about the new UI changes andcustomization coming in 1.2 then you will be especially excited about this newsite coming to help you. ChewUI.com was founded by a one man/one womandesign/dev team that want to be able to offer players just like you and me aplace to go to find UI customization, post your own layout and more. The news of the new UI updates and customizable features wasjust released to us at SWTOR Guild Summit in Austin. This is where I met JodiHodges and Patrick Murray of the Black Bisectors (Twin Spears Server). Whenthey announcement was first made that we could customize our UIs and thendownload to an XML file, the wheels started turning for ideas. A website that would allow players to share/upload, downloadand rank other UI customizations is just what this game needs. Maybe you wantto find a good healer UI- go…
SWTOR Trooper Leveling Build – Awesome PVE Build For The Commando With Rotations!
In this post we have another build from Swtorsavior.com and this time we are focusing on the Trooper and the Commando advanced class that makes an excellent healer or ranged DPS. This build is a solid DPS build and if you feel that you are getting fryed too soon with the Trooper while leveling you might want to give this a go! Below you will find the full build and then the point allocation you need as well as rotations: SWTOR Trooper Commando Leveling Build: Point Allocation: Level 10 – Havoc Rounds (1/2) Level 11 – Havoc Rounds (2/2) Level 12 – Ironsights (1/3) Level 13 – Ironsights (2/3) Level 14 – Ironsights (3/3) Level 15 – Steadied Aim (1/3) Level 16 – Steadied Aim (2/3) Level 17 – Steadied Aim (3/3) Level 18 – Muzzle Fluting (1/1) Level 19 – Special Munitions (1/1) Level 20 – Grav Round (1/1)…
665 people worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic
Just how many people does it take to make a great MMORPG? BioWare has revealed the numbers on the team that helped make SWTOR a reality. Not counting the voice actors, 665 people worked on SWTOR. During a GDC panel, the company revealed the breakdown of the team members: 30 Production 75 Designers 80 Engineers 40 Platform 10 Localization 10 Audio 140 Artists (Both internal and outsourced) 280 QA (Both internal and outsourced) The game reportedly cost more than $200 million to make and BioWare says they are excited for what is on the horizon and still yet to come in the game. They have a dedicated team still hard at work making new content for the game. (I got to see this team in action myself at the tour of BioWare Austin this past Monday). It takes a full team of people, all working hard towards the same common…
TOR TV: SWTOR Episode II – The Internet Strikes Back
Khalirei the Creator of “SWTOR Episode I – A NEW MEME” has finally made a sequel to his first EPIC Machinima, But Warning: This time it’s rated M for Manneyus. I especially appreciated the Battlemaster bag and Minecraft scenes. Looking forward to part 3! Take your time, don’t give into pressure from commenters – great ideas sometimes take a while to come along. Interested in SWTOR Movies? We have new movies most weekdays here onswtorstrategies! Have suggestions for movie we ought to feature? Get in contact with us here
Combat Logs and Training Dummies in SWTOR 1.2
One of the biggest questions to come out of the SWTOR Guild Summit was in regards to combat logs and training dummies in 1.2. While they have confirmed they have combat logs in 1.2, there was not a lot of information being released about it yet and in the community, there seems to also be a lot of confusion about it. So here’s what was said at Guild Summit regarding combatlogs: Combat logs were intended to be in the game in some form(those in beta will remember it before it was removed and not added to launchdue to bugs in the system). However, they do not want players judging one another basedon combat logs and stats so their solution is that players will only see their owncombat logs. You will have the opportunity to write the combat log to disk andsave it on your computer. This gives guilds the freedom…
TOR TV: Stealth Run the False Emperor Hardmode
This takes around 4 mins per run for 2 chests! Very fast Credits and loot to sell to the galactic trade network or vendor or even gear up your companions. 1:33 first chest loot, 2:31 second chest loot (On the video) First chest has 5k to 9.9k credits, second chest has 2k to 6k creds. Can contain blues, oranges and epics aswell. At least 120k/hour purely from the credits. Once you have got both chest, just exit Area and then once outside the instance, Right click on your portrait(Left of your skill bar) and “Reset all active flashpoints” This is very effective. I get around 20 to 25k credits and from 2-5 items every 5-10mins. Got a purple epic helm wich is almost as good as the rakata gear today in the first chest. Definately a yes. Made 300k in under 2 hours by selling green item and from the credits….
Panels, Panels, Panels! SWTOR Guild Summit Day 2
Day 2 is by far the most eventful day of the SWTOR Guild Summit. In fact, it was so much so that many complained there was far too much crammed into one day. BioWare devs and staff agree. It seems they only had the livestream capability for one day so they put all the panels on Monday but when combined with the studio tour and lunch at BioWare as well, it made for a very, very long day. The good news is there were tons of things covered. Some ofyou were probably watching on the livestream and know some of this already butI know others have questions about certain things. So I’m going to break eachpanel down into a separate post and recap some of the most important informationto come from that post. I’ll then come back and edit this post to contain links toeach of the panels: Operations and…
TOR TV: How I Got Through SWTOR
TerminalMontage made this short animated video showing his experiences in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Of what I can see from the video, he quit playing. Who knows.. His lose, but the video is really funny for sure 🙂
Lunch with BioWare: SWTOR Guild Summit Day 2
David Bass Says “Go Nuts” on the Free Food. Woo! We headed over to BioWare Austin headquarters for lunch and studio tours. The building doesn’t look like much from the outside but inside it was rocking! They took us in about 15 at a time while everyone else had their pick of a few food trucks in the parking lot. This is one of the best parts of the design and scheduling of the Guild Summit. This is when we all have the chance to mingle and chat with one another. Since I was invited here as a guild leader and not as a member of the press, I’m trying to make the most of my time here by talking to other guild leaders and representatives, finding out what other guilds are doing right (and what some are doing wrong), discussing what they love about the game, what they dislike…
Intergalactic Intel: Operations
“Drop group,” Niggles whispered me. At this point in our relationship I learned that if Niggles requested something, it was usually for my benefit. An invite message promped from Niggles a few seconds later. “I’m not ready for this.” I whispered back. “Don’t worry Zexu. This is an easy operation.” Welcome back to another installment of Intergalactic Intel! My apologies for being so late on this article, but you get two today! I’m reporting from the wonderful San Francisco, as I attend GDC. Without further ado let’s get down to this week’s topic. Operations. Operations are what we call raids here in SWTOR. You can complete them with eight or sixteen people. In addition to this you have normal mode, hard mode and nightmare modes to attempt to complete. Each level providing a new challenge of difficulty and a new amount of loot. The team I ran with this week…
Former “Star Wars” child actor Jake Lloyd vows never to act again
Continuing my NON SWTOR news, I got a story on the Former “Star Wars” child actor Jake Lloyd. Recently he told how he quit acting after school bullies mocked his Hollywood career and made life a “living hell.” Lloyd decided on an early retirement from acting because he was struggling to fit in after playing Anakin Skywalker in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” when he was just eight years old. He subsequently destroyed all his “Star Wars” memorabilia, and only ever stepped in front of the camera again to reprise his role as Anakin for five video games. He tells Blackbook Mag, “Other children were really mean to me. They would make the sound of the light saber every time they saw me. It was totally mad. “My entire school life was really a living hell – and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day.” Lloyd, who…
1.1.5 Patch Notes — 3/6/2012
BioWare took the servers down for scheduled Maintenance today. At the same time they launched patch 1.1.5. While this patch is nothing compared to the monster that patch 1.2 looks like it’s going to be, it still brings many new fixes to the game. Check it out below: General Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6). Classes and Combat General Moving while channeling an ability (such as Telekinetic Throw and Force Lightning) will no longer cancel the Global Cooldown, which would allow those abilities to deal more damage than intended. Sith Warrior The French version of the “Darth” title is now correct. Flashpoints and Operations Operations General Bosses in Operations now drop the correct amount of loot when the group is using the…
SWTOR Bounty Hunter Powertech PVE/Leveling Build With Point Allocation And Rotations!
In this post we have another leveling/PVE build courteous of www.swtorsavior.com. This build will give you an awesome DPS build for the Bounty Hunter Powertech or at the very least it will allow you to get to grips with the talent tree and the point allocation until you find your playstyle. Before I post the build I will give you some information on the Bounty Hunter Powertech class assuming you are brand new to the class and the game. If not you can skip this down to the build below. The Bounty Hunter Powertech is a Heavy Armor class and you can either play as a Ranged DPS or Tank depending on what build you use. The build below is a Ranged DPS leveling build for the Powertech. Your main weapon will be blasters and an important thing to remember when playing SWTOR as a Bounty Hunter Powertech is that…
Guild summit: Patch 1.2 trailer
Someone was quick to save the trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic 1.2 patch when it was on the live stream. We are expecting a much better version tomorrow and will update is as soon as it goes live. Until then, check his version out:
SWTOR Friend Trial program detailed
Following up on Lisa’s live blogging from the guild summit, BioWare just announced Friends Trial. This system let you invite your friends to check out the game for free for a whole week! Check out the official press release below: BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Friends Trial starts tomorrow, March 6th!* For a limited time, players who have an active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription will be able to invite up to three of their friends to explore the Star Wars™ galaxy.The Star Wars: The Old Republic Friends Trial is an opportunity for players to invite three (3) of their friends to take part in a 7-day trial of the game. During this trial period, invited players can explore each of the four Origin Worlds, and experience the opening adventures for each class as they start along their epic journey.Current subscribers can…
SWTOR Guild Summit Day 2
Here we are in Austin for Day 2 of the SWTOR Guild Summit. At 9am, crowds were already gathering in the lobby, getting ready for the big day of events. The doors open to the main ballroom at the DoubleTree hotel at 9:30am and at 10:00am, we begin the welcome and introductions. Many things on the schedule for today so stay tuned here and to our Twitter to keep up with all the latest news and happenings. To kick things off today, we hear introductions from Stephen Reid followed by James Ohlen with a state of the game address and a sneak peak at Game Update 2. (Video to follow) This new update is HUGE. It will be one of the largest free updates ever seen in an MMORPG. It’s the type of content you would find in an expansion to most MMOs. Some highlights: New Warzone New Operation Part…
SWTOR Guild Summit Day 1
3:45 PM – Day 1 of the SWTOR Guild Summit is here! I recently registered at the DoubleTree and there are crowds forming around the lobby as others get settled into their rooms. We’re super excited but for those of you at home anxiously awaiting updates, there isn’t too much to say yet. Tonight is more of a social event as we will leave the DoubleTree at 6pm for a screening of Star Wars: Episode 1 in 3D at the Alamo Drafthouse. Those of you not from Texas may not be familiar with the Alamo Drafthouse so I will tell you, it’s one of the coolest movie theaters around. We will eat dinner there (they serve it right to you in your movie) and it’s a lot of fun. The atmosphere is always great, fun and relaxed at any Alamo Drafthouse I’ve been to. But you won’t be getting any…
Memes of the week: February 27 – March 4
Last week we posted a weekly rundown of SWTOR Memes we collected around the web. The article was well received, but some people asked us about what this meme thing is, so here’s a more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so it’s rhymes with ‘dream’; some pronounce it so it sounds like ‘mem’ (from mem-ory). An Internet meme is an idea that is propagated through the World Wide Web. The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag, or just a word or phrase, such as intentionally misspelling the word “more” as “moar” or “the” as “teh”. The meme may spread from person to person via social networks, blogs ( such as this), direct email, news sources, or other web-based services. An Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations, parody, or by…
Star Wars conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie dies
Ralph McQuarrie, the artist who committed George Lucas’ ideas to canvas when he was trying to drum up interest in ‘Star Wars,’ has died at the ripe old age of 82. If there’s any justice in the world, he’ll turn into a blue-tinted ghost to hang out with Yoda and Alec Guiness. McQuarrie’s role in getting ‘Star Wars’ onto the big screen can’t be overstated. Lucas was getting shot down left and right by studio heads when he went in to pitch ‘Star Wars,’ but after commissioning McQuarrie to generate some concept art, his next meeting — with 20th Century Fox — was a success. From that, we get John Williams’ classic score, ILM, Indiana Jones and Pixar, plus a countless number of future writers and directors inspired by ‘Star Wars.’ How cool would it be to put “Designed Darth Vader” on your tombstone? It should be said that these…
A Second Look at SWTOR from Rival Tide
As SWTOR has been out for a couple of months now, players are taking a second look at the game to see if their early impressions were spoken too soon or if the game still lives up to the expectations we all had in the beginning. Rival Tide takes a second look at the popular MMO and tells us what they think about it as it stands today. There are many things that have changed from the early impressions of the game. For one, online gameplay can change regularly. Patches and game updates will change and the dynamic player community will affect the game as well. SWTOR is no exception and Rival Tide takes a look at some of the changes in the game and the community. Some positive points: the story, the voice acting, the planets and their unique quest lines and more. Some down points: the crew skills,…
SWTOR Guild Summit Update- Got Questions?
The big day is almost here- the first even SWTOR Guild Summit kicks off tomorrow evening (for a social gathering) but the real good stuff begins on Monday morning. I’ll be there live in Austin, Tweeting from the scene and also live-blogging so check in throughout the day for updates, photos and more. So before I head out for all the fun, what questions do youhave? What do you want to learn from the guild summit? I’m going to be diggingin my heels and getting all the info I can share with you and I will try to askany questions I get the opportunity to. We’ll also learn from the questions ofother guild representatives and of course, there’s also a chance to play 1.2 livefrom Austin. Here’sthe full livestream schedule: 10:00AM CST (4PM GMT) – Welcome and Introductions 10:30AM CST (4:30PM GMT) – State of the Game and Game Update…
Georg Zoeller Talks Economic Changes in Patch 1.1.5
If you missed his blog post on the official forums, Principle Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller had a very interesting post that talks about the changes in Patch 1.1.5. Basically, he gives the players a look into changes to the economy coming soon and how this will affect us. He provides it in-context and also with some lore. (He’s always been great at the story-telling.) Here is a piece of what he said in the blog post about colorcrystal changes: It’sbeen reported that Operatives of the Republic Strategic Intelligence Servicehave recovered several new variations of color crystal prototypes during adaring raid on a cutting edge Imperial Science Bureau outpost on Ilum. Amongthe items recovered are a number of rare, purple-hued color crystals, usuallyexclusive to Imperial-held worlds. Republicscientists are confident that they will be able to reverse-engineer andpotentially replicate the captured Imperial technology, including the colorcrystals, in a matter of weeks….
US PvP Server Population Statistics and Data
Just as promised recently, Dulfy has some statistical data on US PvP and RP-PvP server population for us. If you want to know which PvP server to join, how many people are on your PvP server or what the server balance is between factions on your server then this data will help you out. From Dulfy: Thereare only 44 PVP/RP-PVP servers so the data collection took a bit shorter, butit got delayed by a day cuz I didn’t know typing “fleet” and”the fleet” in the who list window give different results – I wastyping in “the fleet” after typing in all the warzones – “thepit, the civil war, the voidstar etc” – this gave much lower numbers (atfirst I thought it was cuz the players on PvP servers are less “lazy”and don’t sit around on the fleet as much hehe). I had to erase all the dataand start over. 7planets…
