If you are a follower of our blog, you know we are huge fans of Star Wars: fan movies. Back in the summer of 2010 we featured a movie by Martin Klekner called “Star Wars: Shadows of the Past” Now he is back, and deserves a tone of support for the awesome job his is doing. Check out his Concept Teaser for his upcomming star wars fan film Star Wars: Armies of the Fallen. Plot: Several years have passed since the end of Shadows of the Past. War has been raging ever since. Fallen’s revolution changed the whole Empire, it turned the Master’s realm to shreds. Fallen’s armies, though weak and unorganized at the beginning, were forged into a deadly and unstoppable weapon. Now all that’s left is to strike a final blow and confront Master directly. Created by: Martin Klekner Music by: Tomas Zemler Voiceover by: Austin McComb
Interview of Gabe Amatangelo
SWTOR Life visited Gamescom this year and also had the great opportunity to interview Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo about SWTOR. We have seen other interviews with Gabe but it’s always great to see what else he will say and do. Here some info from SWTOR-Life about the interview and then check out the video below to see it all for yourself: “”The first booth I visited at Gamescom this year was Star Wars: The Old Republic booth. I was curious as to what will I find there. What I found were people playing the new warzone Ancient Hypergates and, to my surprise, Principal Lead PvP Designer Gabe Amatangelo himself chilling and waiting for the press to come. I spent more than half my time in SWTOR playing PvP on the maps this man designed so I opened with: “You ruined my life by wasting sooooo much of my…
Developer Dispatch — Terror From Beyond
Game Update 1.4 is coming soon and with it one of the most dynamic and difficult Operations in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. SWTOR is changing for the better and with free to play on the way, we are also seeing updates that are slowly bringing out things the game will end up with in F2P mode. Game update 1.4 is highly anticipated and the time is nearly here. Are you wondering more about what you can expect? We have a great video/trailer with a sneak peak of Terror from Beyond straight from the developers themselves. BioWare tells us more about it in this official news post: In “Terror from Beyond”, you will be called upon to face a mysterious new threat that has emerged from one of the most obscure places in the galaxy: the Gree planet of Asation. The Gree have been safeguarding ancient technologies on the planet…
Game Update 1.4 is now on PTS, here are the patch notes
BioWare have already hinted alot about the upcomming patch 1.4 with there dev blog the other day. Now we get to try out the patch on the public test servers. Seems like a ton of great changes overall. Match to chest for companions, offhand modification, new gear level, addressing the pvp gear gap, return to where you were after a lfg queue… lots of stuff that they have listened to people asking for. Check out the patch notes below: Highlights Terror from Beyond, a new Operation, is now available! Travel to the remote planet of Asation, where the Dread Masters have commandeered an ancient Gree Hypergate in order to unleash untold horrors upon the galaxy. Terror from Beyond features 5 powerful new boss encounters that can be challenged in 8- and 16- player Story or Hard Mode, offering some of the most challenging group content yet! A new set of PvE gear…
Daniel Erickson is “Actively looking for new opportunities”
We learned in the past that making assumptions based on a person’s LinkedIn profile is not always the best idea. Some people take a little thing such as change of job description and blow it into something it’s not. However, if you take a look at Daniel Erickson’s profile, you will see that he says he is “Actively looking for new opportunities”. This lends itself to a little bit of conversation. The Lead Designer/Creative Director at Bioware/Electronic Arts works in the gaming industry, an industry we know is booming and at the same time, one that can change with the snap of your fingers. It takes an entire team of people to build and launch a game and after that launch, all of the same team members are not needed to stay on. Layoffs usually happen and those creative people have to search for a new job or a new…
Are Black-Cyan Sabers Coming in SWTOR 1.4?
It’s apparent that black based sabers are really popular in SWTOR, especially with end-game users. Everywhere you look you see people with them and fewer people with more traditional colored sabers. Playing on this trend, we might see some new sabers in 1.4. Rare crystals are very popular in the game. It’s fun to hunt for them and to have the bragging rights of having a rare saber color. But if they make it too hard to get, players get frustrated so what you often see is tons of people with the ‘rare’ saber because it was so popular, which of course, drops the rarity of it. If the black-cyan sabers are coming, this might be just what we see with them. They’ve been around the game for awhile now but not attainable, except through exploiting a bug but now we may finally be getting Black-Cyan sabers to SWTOR. In…
The Fan Favorite Reward is “The Party Jawa”
If you’ve been waiting to hear what the Fan Favorite would be, the info has finally been released. Not so shocking to me personally, it was the Party Jawa. I had a really good feeling when I saw the choices this would be the one to come out on top. SWTOR/BioWare let us know in this official post: BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce that “The Party Jawa” has won our Fan Favorite voting contest. Over the past month, our Facebook Fans have had the opportunity to choose a favorite item to receive as a reward when Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ launches its new Free-to-Play option this Fall. Although it was hard to pick a favorite, The Party Jawa won by an overwhelming majority! The Party Jawa celebrates a player’s status as a veteran of the galaxy with a unique and fun animation. The Party Jawa will be rewarded…
BioWare Responds to Questions on the latest Developer Blog
A few days ago, BioWare posted a blog update by Senior Designer on Star Wars: The Old Republic Austin Peckenpaugh. The blog post was mainly about class changes and balance in the comming major update: patch 1.4. With that, the forums went crazy with questions for BioWare and so far the mods have been good with a few examples on how the new system will work in the future. Read our copy/paste below, or check out the full thread on the official forum. Allison Berryman Consider the following examples under the new system:ex. A: Player A stuns the target for 4 seconds. 1 second after the stun is applied, player B stuns the same target for 4 seconds. The target is controlled for a total duration of 5 seconds. Player A stuns the enemy for 4 seconds | effective control duration = 4 seconds | enemy gains 800 Resolve 1 second later,…
Ilum Improvements Coming in January and More from Gabe Interview
Game Breaker talked with Gabe Amatangelo at PAX about revamp’d Ilum coming in January + closing PVP gear gap w/level 50 bolster and much more. You can see a video as well as read the full transcript of the interview on their website. Here’s a snippet.. On future content releases: We’re going to be having a faster cadence of delivering content and features. There’s going to be around a six-week cycle where you’ll see something new, like there’s going to be the new operation, the new warzone, the new HK-51 Belsavis area, things of that nature. On layoffs: You have different needs in development when you’re going to launch as opposed to after launch. A lot of it lies in the formation of the tools. You put a lot of work and effort toward getting the tools and you get more efficient with them. It’s kind of this sliding scale…
Noxxic Gaming Guides and Interview
Here at SWTOR Strategies, we’ve been bringing you great SWTOR news and info as well as Star Wars and MMORGP news and info since before SWTOR’s release. Well, we found something else really cool in our research- gaming guides from Noxxic guild. In particular, we found their SWTOR guide but then we saw they also have guides for many other great games, some of which you might also play. The crew over at Noxxic were nice enough to take some time to talk to me about their guild, their website, their guides and what they are all about. So here’s the interview for you to learn more yourself and be sure to head on over and check out their guides! Lisa: Can you tell us a little about Noxxic, the games you play and what you’re all about? At Noxxic, we only have one goal and that is to provide…
TOR TV: SWTOR Explained #8: Meetra Surik Part 1
xZeroTolerence55x is back with a new video telling the back story ( lore) of Star Wars: The old republic. Finishing off the story of Revan we now see the story of the Jedi Exile which is the person you play in Knight of the Old republic 2. This is an awesome movie to check out if you haven’t played KOTOR 2 yet.
1.3.7 Patch Notes 9/5/2012
As we mentioned a few days ago, this weeks Scheduled Maintenance: was was postponed do to labour day. But now the server are back up, and BioWare have patched the servers. This time BIoWare is fixing one of my greatest annoyances since the servers merge – the unique Legacy names. Finally players are able to have the same surname as others – just like in real life. Anyways, below are the patch notes: Flashpoints and Operations General Players will no longer be prevented from traveling to their group’s in a Flashpoint or Operation due to the instance being full. Group Finder Group Finder now retains a character’s role selections when joining or leaving a group. Items General The event outfits (the Rakghoul Containment outfit and Sand People Bloodguard outfit) now bind to Legacy instead of binding on pickup. Muse Vestments no longer clip incorrectly with character heads. Helmets, circlets, masks,…
Guild Wars 2 Tops UK Sales but lags behind SWTOR, and Tera Merges Servers
Lots of ups and downs in the gaming world today as Guild Wars 2 tops UK sales but lags behind SWTOR and Tera is merging servers. What could these trends be showing us about the gaming niche in general or what we stand to see or not see from future games? Massively explains: Guild Wars 2 is the second largest non-World of Warcraft PC MMO launch in UK history according toChart-Track. The new fantasy title from ArenaNet topped sales charts this week but still sold less at retail than Star Wars: The Old Republic did at launch. This comes out at the same time as the news that the newly released (younger than SWTOR) game Tera is trimming down its servers list: The latest letter from TERA’s producer is out, and while it includes some interesting statistics, the most important bit of information is that the game will be trimming down its server list. On September 18th, the…
Developer Update: Class Changes and Balance in Game Update 1.4
Austin Peckenpaugh, Senior Designer on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ has an interesting update today about the future of the game, class changes and balance that will come in game update 1.4. He explains in full detail on the community news page: For Game Update 1.4, we wanted to address several key issues with class gameplay usability and balance. Foremost among these are adjustments to crowd control and the Resolve system, the subsequent class changes made to harmonize with those control adjustments, and a reevaluation of stealth spec gameplay. He then goes on to talk about what some of these specific changes will be. Crowd control and resolve changes are first on the list. He explains further: In Game Update 1.4, we’ve made adjustments to the range of control abilities under a new philosophy. We want control to be something more readable, more predictable, and less chaotic in effect. To achieve…
New Star Wars The Old Republic: Encyclopedia Images
Amazon now has a few more new images from the upcoming The Old Republic: Encyclopedia, witch we spoke about a few month ago. The book is due out October 15, 2012! Link Book Description Since its release in 2011, the massively multiplayer online role playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic has captivated thousands of gamers and Star Wars fans alike. Now comes the ultimate in-depth guide to the turbulent and fascinating world featured in the game — The Old Republic. Created in full collaboration with LucasArts, this in-depth companion covers the spectrum of characters, weapons, vehicles, events, and planets of Star Wars: The Old Republic. More than just an encyclopedia, it is the ultimate guided tour of the dangerous and mysterious universe found in a galaxy far, far away. © 2012 Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & ™ All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Interview with Voice Actor Marc Thompson Narrator of Star Wars Audio Books
Voice actor Marc Thompson who is the narrator of the Star Wars audio books was at the Star Wars Celebration VI in Orlando Florida for their annual get together. This event took place on August 25th 2012. He was gracious enough to give an interview and he spoke about how exciting it was for him to be the “voice” of the Star Wars audio books since he is such a huge fan of the series. He also explained his technique for coming up with the different voices and the processes that take place to make each character an individual. It is very interesting to learn that he actually looks at illustrations of characters and takes their race into account when choosing the right voice or tonal quality for a character. As a bonus, he even offers a couple of character voices and explains the difference between doing a cartoon voice…
Interview with Matt Bromberg about F2P model
The move from SWTOR’s pay to play model to the free to play model may be a blessing in disguise for those gamers who want to try the game but who do not want to pay. For the company, BioWare, this switch may not be a blessing for the company or the current players. While the company does want to make money, this is not the sole purpose of offering free to play to the public. What is more important is having the game played by a wider audience. According to an interview in Game Industry International with Matt Bromberg on Thursday, he stated: “”’My primary intention is to make as many people play this beautiful game that we’ve made,’ he added. ‘It just so happens that the business will naturally grow as more people come to play the game, but we’re not trying to squeeze every single penny out…
EA/Bioware F2P Hiring
Have you ever wanted to work for a game company? Now that SWTOR is going free, Bioware is recruiting new employees to help aid this expansion. The company’s headquarters are located in Austin, Texas and they are looking for a Digital Merchandising Specialist. This position does require that the applicant work well in a team setting in order to have the transition from a for play game to a free game to go smoothly. So do you have the qualifications to apply for this great job opportunity? The following is an excerpt from Linkedin that was posted by BioWare and shows the job description: “BioWare’s Analytics and Reporting team aggregates, analyzes, and reports data in order to inform decisions and track KPIs. The Austin studio is looking for an experienced, energetic, full-time Monetization Analyst (Digital Merchandising Specialist) to work with our development team. This person will focus on analyzing, managing,…
Scheduled Maintenance: September 5
Due to Labor Day, Next week’s scheduled maintenance will occur on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. Check out the the official forum for more info or see our Copy past below: Courtney Woods We wanted to inform you all that due to the Labor Day holiday on Monday, September 3rd, 2012, we will be moving next week’s scheduled maintenance to Wednesday, September 5th, 2012. We will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Wednesday, September 5th, 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.
Star Wars 1313 Descent to the Underworld Trailer
Are you excited for Star Wars 1313 Descent to the Underworld? Want to learn more about the upcoming game title? Haven’t even heard of it before? Here’s a video you’re going to want to check out. Star Wars 1313 will feature epic action adventure game play including exotic weaponry and gadgets that bounty hunters depend on for survival. In addition, the game will feature a combination of agile cover-based combat, epic platforming and seamless playable cinematic game play. Players will experience awe-inspiring and action-packed cinematic sequences, constantly staying engaged through the threat, pressure and tension of this criminal underworld. Are you looking forward to it? Will you play or do you think LucasArts has another Star Wars title on their hands that isn’t going to make it big? Star Wars 1313 Descent to the Underworld Trailer [HD] Developer: LucasArts Release: TBA Genre: Action/Adventure Platform: PS3/X360/PC Publisher: LucasArts
Developer Update – Terror from Beyond coming in 1.4
As mentioned by Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez in his forum post a few days ago, BioWare would have a new Developer update for us this week. This time Lead Operations & Flashpoint Designer Jesse Sky talks about the new Operation Terror from Beyond, that comes with patch 1.4 some time next month. Here is an interesting snip: Terror from Beyond offers five new major boss encounters that will challenge even the most highly-coordinated groups of players. In keeping with previous Operations, Terror from Beyond includes one “puzzle” encounter that really steps outside of the bounds of what you normally see in a boss fight. To defeat this new enemy, players will need to work together to repair a massive, ancient Gree computer from within the machine itself. Unlike previous puzzle encounters where the solutions were relatively easy to figure out, this one has players leveraging their particular group composition to control a chaotic situation. It’s very different…
Jeff Hickman Interview
With the news of SWTOR going free to play, there are many who want to learn as much as they can about the game or any changes being made in the upcoming updates to the game. Even those who are already fans are listening with eager ears to anything new. This interview with Jeff Hickman didn’t have any big secret reveals over the game but it did have some very interesting topics and some insight into the very experience Jeff Hickman and his work on SWTOR. RPG Site says: With a background rooted in Mythic Entertainment, Hickman has a long history with MMOs – first on Dark Age of Camelot and then on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. We quizzed him not only on the future of The Old Republic, but of the MMO genre in general. Here’s what he said. They came prepared with some great questions and Hickman…
The Dwindling Dev Tracker
Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez talks about the communication from BioWare on the Forum tracker. He also hints at new blogs incoming tomorrow? Check it out here, or read our copy pate below. Joveth Gonzalez While we appreciate all kinds of constructive feedback, as Allison pointed out, the forums are only one small measure of communication. Do keep in mind that while some days it seems that there isn’t any forum activity from us, we’re busy hopping around, taking a look at the SWTOR subreddit, Twitter, Facebook, and responding to PMs. Consider that our fanbase is large and spread across various social media sites, and you can see that we strive to make sure that they are covered, no matter where our fans are. We’re also working on some new community blogs that we’ll be posting in the upcoming week or so, in addition to our standard weekly blogs that…
Interview with SWTOR Lead Writer Hall Hood
Last week TORWars had a great interview with SWTOR Lead Writer Hall Hood via their podcast. There are some amazing details in this hour-long interview and they cover topics like: ~ Character development that keeps players interested~ Why some classes are clearly Republic, and some are Sith, and some walk a very gray line~ Drawing inspiration from Episodes 4, 5, and 6 (and not so much from 1,2, and 3!)~ Why humor is important to Star Wars~ Writing characters and NPCs that people care about~ Why the Sith aren’t completely evil~ How does one write for players who like to be smartasses?~ Where do the stories go, now that players have leveled to 50?~ Why plot twists are essential to the Star Wars universe~ Can great villains (or heroes) truly die, or can they re-appear? Give it a listen and check it out for yourself. It’s definitely worth it and…