Following our recent post about Bioware’s Creative Director James Ohlen and his speech on the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), additional details have emerged over at Massively. Bioware’s Creative Director James Ohlen The site has posted a detailed account of Ohlen’s presentation at the event where the latter covered the challenges Bioware faced during launch, its conversion to Free to Play (F2P) and the concerns the Austin-based developer had about Guild Wars 2 and Mists of Panderia. He also went into details about what the studio went through when the game started losing subscribers and how they managed to turn it around with F2P.
How non-paying players can positively impact a game’s success
Since Star Wars The Old Republic (SWToR) changed its subscription model to Free-to-Play (F2P), a lot of opinions were raised about whether it was the right thing to do or not. Some quickly labeled SWToR as a failure that didn’t live up to the hype , while others saw this as a necesary change that helps the game’s long-term growth. Whether this change was successful or not remains to be seen, however first indications as reported by James Ohlen and the recent EA investor’s call are positive. Free-to-play might not be such a bad thing after all! A new article over at Gamasutra.com, argues that non-paying players, actually help the growth of such games. The author of the article cites three major reasons for opening up a game to freeloaders. Among other things F2P players help bring in other new players that eventually will turn into subscribers, they show their appreciation…
Game Developers Conference 2013: James Ohlen talks about SWToR’s woes during launch
Bioware’s creative director James Ohlen recently spoke at the Game Developer’s Convention about SWToR’s launch and provided a plethora of details about the game’s launch. Among other things, he mentioned that Bioware significantly underestimated how quickly players can burn through content and found itself in a difficult spot. The development team originally expected that story lines would keep gamers engaged for at least five months – an expectation that as we all know didn’t prove to be true. Bioware’s creative director James Ohlen During launch, subscribers spent an average of 40 hours per week playing SWToR, while in some cases they would reach 80-120 hours on average per week. These extended gaming sessions lead to having close to half a million players at endgame content within a month’s period since launch.
SWTOR Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer 2.0 Leveling Build
In this post we are going to give you a build for the Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer that you can use with the new 2.0 expansion. This build has been developed using the PTS so there may well be some changes but it should get you started. 3/3 Calcify 3/3 Force Horrors 2/2 Disintegration 2/2 Oppressing Force 2/2 Parasitism 1/1 Madness 1/1 Death Field 3/3 Sith Efficacy 2/2 Corrupted Flesh 2/2 Haunted Dreams 1/1 Wrath 1/1 Deathmark 3/3 Creeping Death 2/2 Devour 1/1 Surging Speed 2/2 Shapeless Spirit 1/1 Creeping Terror 3/3 Seeping Darkness 2/2 Force Suffusion 1/1 Sap Strength 1/1 Lucidity 3/3 Electric Induction SWTOR Sith Inquisitor Sorcerer 2.0 Leveling Build: Still a mock up leveling build and this may change but if you are looking for a headstart to get ready for patch 2.0 this should help. Thanks to the guys over at http://www.swtorsavior.com/ for this one.
Is LucasArts Facing a Shutdown?
There is gossip around the Internet about LucasArts- the kind of gossip that makes fans a bit uneasy. After the cancellation of The Clone Wars, there have been fears that LucasArts is facing a shutdown. Reports tell us that there are incoming Layoffs for Lucasfilm Animation and it only makes sense now that Disney is on the scene to get rid of the department that does the very same thing they already do. While fans are really bummed about the cancellation of The Clone Wars, Lucasfilm has promised that the bonus content will still be made available to fans. But this isn’t the only reason people are whispering about LucasArts… A report from GamesIndustry International says that LucasArts told them that everything is going according to plan and that the rumors are just that- rumors. But not everyone is buying that, including ex employees. One ex-LucasArts employee said: “The ‘business’…
Developer Update: Legions of Scum and Villainy
BioWare posted a new Developer update yesterday. From the title, I thought it was going to be a post about the official forums, but apparently it’s about the new Operation players can try out with game update 2.0: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Legions of Scum and Villiany will be for level 55 players and continues the story line from the trail of the Dread Masters after Operation: Terror from Beyond. Both the Republic and the Empire have heard rumors of a gathering of mercenaries, arms traders, and war beast handlers on the remote desert planet of Darvannis. Intelligence points to the Hutt Cartel as the organization that is gathering an army for an unknown purpose. Both Republic and Empire forces know that the Hutt Cartel must be stopped. Read all about it at the official website. Players arrive outside of a city built into a protective canyon, in the midst of…
1.7.3 Patch Notes – 3/26/2013
BioWare went on and posted that patch notes before server maintenance this time. Pretty awesome thing to do actually, and looking through the patch notes, they are equally awesome. Ready check & Personal Star ship and Finally fixing the double bladed saber issue. This is going to be a good day 🙂 Check out the patch notes below: Highlights Ready Check is now available! Group and Operations Group leaders can initiate a Ready Check by using “/rc” or “/readycheck” chat commands or via the context group menu. Each member of the group will then receive a pop-up prompting them to respond. Responding will place a visual cue on the raid frame or group frame of that player. At the end of the Ready Check, chat feedback indicates whether the group is ready or if not, and lists any non-ready players. Cartel Market General Cartel Market Certificates have been changed to Bind on Legacy. New Items…
Making of Rise of the Hutt Cartel: Part 2
With the big announcement today that Rise of The Hutt Cartel digital expansion will be available on April 14, Bioware also released an interesting video providing more details on the expansion. Among other things, Bioware developers gave out additional information on the continuation of your personal story line as it relates to Karraga the Hutt and the new planet on the expansion called Makeb. The video also provides hints on villains we will face on the new planet and their impact on our game play.
Aggregated 2.0 Fan Site Interviews & Information for ROTHC
There’s an official date for ROTHC and the BioWare PR team has also been in full swing doing interviews with a number of fan sites about SWTOR and ROTHC. To help ensure all the hard work from these interviews is seen, we’re going to try to aggregate all the links here. We’ll be updating this often as more information and posts come out but if you see an interview we’ve missed, feel free to add it to the comments so we can update the list!
APAC/Oceanic Server Merges
Earlier today Community Manager Eric Musco made a forum update regarding the Oceanic issues, with low server population. After careful consideration, and reading though pages after pages of forum rage, BioWare will be merging the oceanic servers into the north American servers. This will off course give the APAC players alot more people to play with, but people are raising their concern about ping time. I personally have no problems as a European when I occasionally play on US servers, but what experience do you guys have? Hey everyone, I have an update for you on our long term plans for the APAC servers. Before I do that though I want to let you know up front that we still have quite a bit of work to do to make this happen so I cannot provide any timeframes for you today. We know that when we asked you, the community,…
PSA – PTS Closing 3/26
BioWare are closing down the public test servers on March 26. This is off course due to the announcement of Star Wars: The old republic Rise of the Hutt Cartel. For some reason we are not getting this information when we actually log into the PTS, but AmberGreen updates us on the forums: PTS Closing – 3/26/2013 | 03.25.2013, 09:43 AM Tomorrow morning, we will be closing the PTS and this forum as we conclude public testing of Game Update 2.0. Please remember that the current build on PTS is not the final version, and there will be updates to what’s here before Game Update 2.0 is deployed to the live servers. Your participation and feedback have been exceptionally valuable, and we appreciate everyone who took time to test Game Update 2.0! PTS Closing Details: Date: March 26th, 2013 Time: 8AM PDT (5PM GMT) Duration: The PTS will remain closed until we…
Rise of the Hutt Cartel to release April 9 (early access)
It’s official! Star Wars: The old Republic Rise of the Hutt Cartel is to be released on April 9 – or at least the early access for people who have pre-ordered the game get’s access to the game that day. Everyone Else will get access april 14. The internet has been busing all day with news and interviews about this, and we will have a write up on Interviews & Information later today. With the news about the release date, BioWare also released the seccond part of the developer dispatch: Making of: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Check it out below, and check out the official BioWare announcement below that. We’re thrilled to announce the launch date of Sunday, April 14, 2013, for the release of the first Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. Introducing five new levels of gameplay and the vibrant new planet of Makeb, Rise of the Hutt Cartel will be available for download beginning…
Scheduled Maintenance – 3/26 – 1.7.3
Just a friendly reminder that BioWare will be taking down the servers on March 26 to preform maintenance and apply game update 1.7.3 . Hopefully this patch update will bring us the “Ready Check” function we mentioned back in the beginning of the month. We will of course post the path notes as the become available. Until then, check out the official announcement below: On March 26th, all game servers will be unavailable as we perform scheduled maintenance. Patch 1.7.3 will be implemented during this downtime. Details are as follows: Date: Tuesday, March 26th, 2013 Time: 3AM PDT (10AM GMT) – 7AM PDT (2PM GMT) Duration: 4 hours Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.
Will Blizzard Bring MMOs to Console?
Since before SWTOR first came out, there has been talk about bringing it to the consoles. But that is all it was… talk. What began as a mixup turned into rumors that were debunked by BioWare. While some players scoff at the idea of SWTOR on console, there are some who really want to see it happen one day. The idea of bringing MMOs of consoles is not a new one but it’s not one that any developer has been ready to tackle. That is, until now. World of Warcraft lead systems designer Greg Street would be keen to bring the company’s MMO experience to next-generation consoles, says VG 24/7. They go on to say: “I would personally be very excited to see that, it would be a huge challenge to take something like World Of Warcraft with its massive hard drive footprint and its reliance on mouse and keyboard,”…
1.7.2b Patch Notes
All the servers are coming back online and BioWare released the patch notes. BioWare removed the Bolster trick people were using to power level characters doing the double XP weekend. Patch Notes 1.7.2b General Bolster has been temporarily removed on The Western Ice Shelf of Ilum so that lower level players can no longer use the area to level up more quickly than intended.
Reminder: Scheduled Maintenance: March 22nd, 2013
Just a quick reminder that BioWare will be taking the servers down tomorrow for Scheduled Maintenance. This Might be to fix some of the PRO leveling tricks Lisa Wrote about earlier today unfortunately, but we will keep you updated with the patch notes a s the surface. Rad the statement below: AmberGreen | 03.21.2013, 12:30 PM We will be performing scheduled maintenance on Friday, March 22nd, 2013 from 3AM PDT (10AM GMT) until 5AM PDT (12PM GMT). All game servers will be offline during this period. Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. Maintenance Date: Friday, March 22nd, 2013 Time: 3AM PDT (12PM GMT) until 5AM PDT (2PM GMT) Patch Note Bolster has been temporarily removed on The Western Ice Shelf of Ilum so that lower level players can no longer use the area to level up more quickly than intended.
SWTOR State of the Game #3
BioWare executive producer Jeff Hickman posted a new state-of-the-game update for Star Wars: The Old Republic. In it, he talks about many topics, including: upcoming features and the fact that SWTOR have had over 2 million new accounts created and have thousands of new players jumping in every single day since free to play was launched. Check it here below! Hi everyone, With the launch of the Relics of the Gree event behind us, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the general state of the game and the launch of our Free-to-Play option. Judging by the conversation in the forums and elsewhere, there appears to be a level of curiosity among many players to learn how things are going at the studio since the launch of the Free-to-Play option. Of course, that’s natural. We’re now about 120 days post-launch and more than 5 months into our new series of content…
Pro Tips for SWTOR Double XP Weekends
Do you want to make the most of the SWTOR double XP weekends? Just in time for the next weekend on the way, we have some tips and ideas for getting the most from your Double XP weekend. Double XP weekends will be held at the following times: March 15, 2013 beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET to March 18, 2013 at 3:00 a.m. ET (passed already) March 22, 2013 beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET to March 25, 2013 at 3:00 a.m. ET March 29, 2013 beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET to April 1, 2013 at 3:00 a.m. ET April 5, 2013 beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET to April 8, 2013 at 3:00 a.m. ET There was an exploit that allowed you to go to Ilum and get powerleveled up especially quick. One guy claimed he hit a record of 1-50 in under 16 hours. As one poster explained: …
Which Is the Best Star Wars MMO?
Do you love Star Wars? Have you played all the Star Wars MMOs? We say “all” like it is a lot but really it’s only 3 (2, depending on who you ask). Well if you ask Massively writer Jef Reahardm, he’ll tell you there is three. They did a recent poll on their site to see what the readers thought was the best: Star Wars has gotten the MMO treatment not once, not twice, but three times. This is assuming that you count SOE’s Clone Wars Adventures browser title, which I do since it features extensive progression, non-combat activities, and a slew of other MMO-like features in spite of its heavy use of instancing. Then there’s Star Wars Galaxies, of course, followed by Star Wars: The Old Republic. For today’s Leaderboard, help us pick the best Star Wars MMO (or at least, the most popular according to Massively commenters). Vote…
New SWTOR Players- How to Pick Your Advanced Class
If you’re new to SWTOR, one of the first questions you might have is about which advanced class you should play. Don’t worry- everyone asks this question. The truth is, there is no wrong class. There are good things about all of them but you will want to choose the one that best suits your player style for starting out, until you learn the game more and really get into it. Don’t forget to check out constantly growing list of guides for Star Wars: The old republic Many players find after playing SWTOR for awhile, that they want to have one of every class or at least a couple of different Advanced Classes that interest them. So we’ll take a look at the different Advanced Classes and help you know how to make the decision for yourself. The first thing you need to know is that once you choose an Advanced…
Companions 101: Mako
BioWare has brought us the latest Companions 101 installment and this time, it’s all about Mako! I’m a fan of the bounty hunter myself so I’ve been looking forward to this one. If you want to learn more about Mako and her backstory, then you will enjoy this Companions 101. Just remember, there are spoilers in these! Meeting Mako Despite her energetic and upbeat attitude, Mako’s life hasn’t always been easy. She grew up on the streets of Nar Shaddaa without any idea who her real family was or how she received her cybernetic implants. Because of these implants, Mako has a constant connection to the Galactic HoloNet. At a very young age, she showed great skill in computers – particularly slicing. After finding out that the Red Light Orphanage she belonged to was going to sell her, Mako used her skills to crash their accounts and escaped to the…
Was the Death Star an Inside Job?
Video creator Graham Putnam describes the video as “an examination of some questionable events and circumstances leading up to the destruction of the Death Star, through the eyes of an amateur investigative journalist within the Star Wars galaxy. The focus is mainly on the connections between the people who created and operated the Death Star and those responsible for destroying it.” The seven-minute video documents “that fateful day” when “the terrorist organization known as the Rebel Alliance blew up the Death Star with a squad of single manned fighters … destroying the prominent political target. “But could the destruction of the Death Star have been an inside job perpetrated by top-ranking Imperial officials and royalty?” Comments on the video’s YouTube site were getting rambunctious and critical Tuesday morning: “Why does the narrator keep calling the destroyed planet ‘Alderbraun’?” … “Aldebran!? Have you even seen the movies!?” Another comment recalled President…
Cross Promotional Pets: Clarification
Many people have been confused about the Cross Promotional Pets we mentioned a few days ago. Yesterday Eric Musco made a post on the official forums clarifying how, exactly, these pets might be obtained: I have the answer to these two questions which I think is what most people are looking for (especially B) A. In order to get the pet you will have to have received the email mentioning the pet promotion. Then you would need to create a new SWTOR account with that email address. That account will then, at a later date, receive the pet. B. At this moment subscribers cannot get the items, no. This was intended as a cross-promotion to other EA free-2-play games. However, I can tell you that subscribers will have access to these items in the future. We are still working out both the when and the how. I will share any details as…
John Riccitiello Resigns From Electronic Arts
EA CEO John Riccitiello submitted his resignation, effective March 30, the video game company announced Monday. In a blog post on the company’s website, executive chairman Larry Probst said the Board of Directors will immediately begin a search inside and outside the company for Riccitiello’s successor. Check out the Press release below. Electronic Arts Announces Change in Executive Leadership Larry Probst Appointed Executive Chairman, Effective Immediately Company Updates 2013 Fiscal Outlook REDWOOD CITY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced that John Riccitiello will step down as Chief Executive Officer and as a member of the Board of Directors, effective March 30. The Board has appointed Larry Probst as Executive Chairman to ensure a smooth transition and to lead EA’s executive team while the Board conducts a search for a permanent CEO. The Board will consider internal and external candidates with the assistance of a leading executive search firm. Mr. Probst has played a leadership role…