While we keep hearing the rumors that SWTOR is a sinking ship or that it is not as popular as BioWare claims. BioWare continues to deny these rumors and recently said in an interview with PC Gamer that the subscriber numbers have remained steady since launch. BioWare lead writer Daniel Erickson told PC Gamer: “”Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server.” This response came as a reaction to a prediction by Cowen analyst Doug Creutz that upset some fans who say the game is doing great. Last week Cowen analyst Doug Creutz ruffled a few fanboy feathers with his prediction of declining subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare lead writer Daniel Erickson responded by saying that subscriptions are not dropping but that the number of concurrent users at peak times has gone down. So…
Patch Notes 1.2.1a – 4/27/2012
BioWare had an Unscheduled Maintenance. Apparently to fix a serious economic exploit We will be deploying a patch and performing an unscheduled maintenance this Friday, April 27th, 2012. Patch notes will be made available shortly after the servers come back up. The servers will be down for four hours on Friday, April 27th, 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. And here are the patch notes: neral – Corrected an item-related issue to prevent a serious economic exploit.
Star Wars Battlefront 3 & 4 Were In Development
Were you waiting on Star Wars Battlefront 3, 4 and more? Well, you’re not the only fan who was anxiously awaiting more games in this series but according to recent news, you might be waiting a little longer than you’d hoped. Gaming Union brings us this report: It’s been revealed that Star Wars Battlefront 3 and Star Wars Battlefront 4 were in development at British development studio, Free Radical, before the studio collapsed. Steve Ellis, who co-founded the studio, broke the news while giving an interview on behalf of his new company, Crash Labs. “They [LucasArts] were big fans of our work, they liked our take on making games, they liked the way we work and they wanted to do this project,” he said. “It was a big thing, we were very excited and for a long time it was going very well.” Making video games is hard work. It…
Over 50% of SWTOR Players Play Warzones
Have you ever wondered just how many players are playing warzones? I’m in a PvP guild on a PvP server and pretty much all of us do warzones on a daily basis. I typically do not have to wait too long to get into a warzone but I have noticed a trend that I start to see the same people over and over again. You start to learn who people are and discover their personalities. You spot the full-time PvPers fairly quickly. Lead designer Daniel Erickson over 50% of TOR players take part in PvP matches, dubbed Warzones, on a daily basis. Erickson said in an interview with GamerZines: “It’s not actually giving players something additional to do, I mean it does that, but it isn’t the motivation,” he explained. “What happened was that we also brought in the guys that had worked on PvP for Warhammer Online. Those guys…
SWTOR Sith Inquisitor Assassin PVP Build For 1.2
Hey guys, We have another build here from the guys over at www.swtorsavior.com and this one is a good one! It is a build from the new collection of PVP builds for patch 1.2. If you have been trying to figure out the changes in patch 1.2 and what it means to your toon or if you are just getting owned in the warzones then this build will help you out. This build is for the Sith Inquisitor and the advanced class we are dealing with here is the Assassin. First of all here is the build for you: So when you are level 10 all you need to do is follow the video above and it will guide you through for the right point allocation. Also as there are not really any rotations when you are PVP’ing I thought I would give you some that you can use but…
SWTOR Launches in the rest of Europe and in the Middle Eastern Countries
Star Wars: The Old Republic has now officially launched in the rest of the European countries that missed out at launch, as well as throughout the Middle East. If you live in any of the following countries, you can now buy the game via buy.swtor.com or pick it up at local retailers. Europe Albania Andorra Belarus (only available at Origin.com) Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Estonia (only available at Origin.com) Gibraltar Iceland Kazakhstan (only available at Origin.com) Latvia (only available at Origin.com) Lithuania (only available at Origin.com) Luxembourg (not available at Origin.com) Macedonia Malta Moldova Romania Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Turkey Ukraine (only available at Origin.com) Middle East Afghanistan Algeria (not available at Origin.com) Bahrain Egypt Israel Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Tunisia (not available at Origin.com) United Arab Emirates Yemen Check out the official statement below or at the official webiste We are excited to announce…
Stacy Haiduk Signed Items NOW LIVE For Charity Auction
Stacy Haiduk, the voice of Smuggler companion Akaavi Spar in Star Wars: The Old Republic is having a charity auction via her website and eBay to raise funds for her charity, Save A Kitty, CA. Stacy chose “Save A Kitty” as her charity, because “Every kitty deserves a chance at a good life. I always take in rescues and meeting the Women who started Save a Kitty showed me what is possible with love and care. The Save a kitty web site has a great quote: ” The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Gandhi” This just in from Stacy Haiduk’s website: Check out our eBay store for some super rare Stacy signed items and help Save A Kitty, CA with your bids! 100% of your bids go to help Save a Kitty, CA – Stacy’s charity of…
Tauntaun Pets Are Here!
Why is everyone huddled around the mailbox (even more than usual) today in SWTOR? Well, the pets for the 1.2 Legacy promotion have now arrived. If you were eligible for the free 30 days play time, you should also be seeing that reflected on your account before midnight Central Standard time tonight. Today is, in fact, the 25th and many were expecting these free bonuses yesterday (as our emails stated) but BioWare actually pushed the date up by one day so today by 1 minute before midnight, everyone eligible should have them. Hold off until then before you start submitting help tickets or angry forum posts. David Bass came in with this message to try to clear up the confusion: Hi everyone, I apologize for the confusion surrounding this but the Legacy Promotion page is accurate. If your account met the Legacy Promotion requirements by April 22nd, you will receive…
TOR TV: Hasting’s Fury Starship Crib!
Following up on yesterdays crips video, I thought it was most appropriate posting “Hasting’s Fury Starship Crib” by the swtorextreme guys. The guys over at swtorextreme are doing an amazing job creating fresh swtor videos every week, so make sure you check out there channel, and check Hastings the jugg in his very own starship crib, the Fury below:
Species of Starwars: Arcona
The Arcona are a species of intelligent, limbed serpents native to the planet Cona. Their desert world is devoid of free water, but has dense concentrations of ammonia. The Arcona evolved claws to get at the water pods concealed beneath the rocky soil of Cona, and ammonia is employed in a supplementary circulatory system used to rid waste from their bodies. The Arcona’s eyes, set wide apart on their anvil-shaped heads, have thousands of individual receptor cells that register color, but give no delineation to form. It is the bulbous, diamond-shaped heat-sensing organ set between their eyes that brings their blurred multicolor world into focus. The Arcona sense of smell is based on their long, flickering tongue that collects molecules for analysis. Arcona live in loose, family-based collectives called nests that are ruled over by the Grand Nest. The society arose from the need to protect the young Arcona. The…
Intergalactic Intel: Patch 1.2 Review
I sat down at the table attempting to finish writing an e-mail to my professor. My phone lit up. “Dude did you see it?” Before I could reply another text from another friend appeared on my phone. “Dual spec!!!!!” A smile began emerging on my face. Another text confirmed my suspicions. “My trooper is gonna have baller ass purple armor!” Patch 1.2 is here. Welcome back to another Intergalactic Intel! A little while ago patch 1.2 hit. With so many big changes coming we can only be excited, but let’s take a closer look at each of the new features that have arrived. Legacy system: Since the beta we’ve had very little idea about what the legacy system actually does. At the guild summit we learned that characters across both factions are apart of a single legacy, which in turn gives various benefits for people leveling classes and races…
Do You Ever Wonder How Lightsabers Got their Famous Sound?
Well now you can hear the story as Ben Burtt talks about creating the sounds for the lightsabers in Star Wars. As he worked on “A New Hope”, Burtt probably wasn’t aware that he was inventing modern sound design. This is a really cool video to help you learn more about lightsabers came to have this distinct sound that we all know and recognize from the movies, games and even toy lightsabers (yes, I own a few of those). Check out the awesome video to learn more. Also remember to check our old “How stuff works” post on Lightsabers. Who knows, you might learn something 🙂
All GTNs Could be Merged to Neutral Access “Soon”
I remember at Guild Summit when we first all noticed GTN access from your ship. A friend sitting near me said “But I noticed it’s neutral. Is there not going to be a regular one on our ship?” It was a legitimate question because on my server and the servers of nearly anyone I have asked, the neutral GTNs are mostly dead. There’s hardly anyone who uses them and little point of putting anything on them because they never sell. We suspected at that time that maybe BioWare had plans of doing something different with the GTNs in the future. About 20 minutes into this conversation with Daniel Erickson, it is revealed that they plan to merge all GTNs to neutral access at some time in the near future. Players are discussing this on the forums already and one has laid out the good and bad points of this decision…
TOR TV: Bloodvein’s SWTOR Space Crib
I has come to my attention that we forgot to post about this video. This video was made by BloodveinMovies back in december, just after the game launched. Episode 04: Welcome to my kabooki space palace! Be sure and wipe your feet before entering my love space! Also, this is my first attempt at a SWTOR Machinima. Let me know what you think in the comments below! =]
Do MMORPGs Create Serial Killers and Mass Murderers?
We’ve probably all heard the stories of horrible things happening to gamers or to the loved ones of gamers- a kid who binged for so long he died at his computer playing his favorite game or maybe the mother who neglected her children and forgets to feed her baby because she is so consumed with a video game. Of all the games that get a bad rap, MMORPGs often rank near the top. I’ve always believed this is due to the nature of the game and not the genre itself. MMORPGs require a certain amount of time and energy investment. Non-gamers have a hard time understanding how someone could want to sit there for hours running around an imaginary world with the avatars of other people. But for those of us who play, it’s more than just a game. The communities that form around an MMORPG are like little subcultures….
1.2.1 Patch Notes 4/24/2012
As always BioWare used today’s server maintenance to patch up. This time with the largest patch since 1.2. If you me, the most important issue corrected, is the issue that prevented players from adding offline players to their friends list. This makes it much easier to mail stuff to your alts. Unfortunately still doesn’t seem to work for our own cross faction alts. Classes and Combat Jedi Knight Sentinel Zen (with Ataru Form) now correctly reduces the global cooldown of Cyclone Slash. Smuggler General Charged Burst’s damage has been increased by approximately 5%. Gunslinger Damage for Aimed Shot, Speed Shot, and Quickdraw has been increased by approximately 5%. Sharpshooter Trickshot’s damage has been increased by approximately 5%. Imperial Agent General Snipe’s damage has been increased by approximately 5%. Sniper Damage for Ambush, Series of Shots, and Takedown has been increased by approximately 5%. Marksmanship Followthrough’s damage has been increased by approximately 5%. Trooper Commando Gunnery Havoc Rounds…
Is BioWare Scrambling to Keep Players in the Game?
This was a discussion I was just having with some gamer friends the other day. BioWare is doing all of these awesome promotions for SWTOR like free play time for those who come back, pets and in game events like the Rakghoul Plague event and more. They are being very open with their Q&A sessions, trying to reveal future content so we all know what we want to hang on for and trying to hear the player concerns and make adjustments as necessary. My friend says, “Yea, they know they are a sinking ship and they’re trying to stay afloat.” At first I thought he was just bitter because he’s let down by the game but when I really thought about it and looked at the facts, it’s possible he was closer to the truth than I thought. PC Gamer says “BioWare doing “anything and everything” to keep players logging…
How to Calculate Companion Gift Affections
Here is another fantastic lesson on SWTOR. We really appreciate the time and attention to detail she puts into helping others understand the game and get more from their experience in it. This week she brought us a great guide on calculating affection with your companions from gifts and conversations. Thanks Dulfy! “Calculating Companion gift affections Many of you have probably seen a chart like this that list all the affection a certain gift will give. Have you ever wondered how that is calculated? If you are curious, those numbers are fairly easily generated via a simple formula! It is simply (gift rank – companion affection rank) * type of gift (green, blue, purple) * Likeness (indifferent, like, favourite, love) Rank Difference There are 5 ranks of companion affection and 5 ranks of companion gifts Rank 1: -1000 to 1999 Rank 2: 2000 to 3999 Rank 3: 4000 to 5999…
Cross genre knowledge
“Why do you play MOBAs?” I was taken back by the question. “They’re fun I guess…” I didn’t know how to reply to my friend. “What’s so fun about a bunch of kids nerd raging at you?” I can honestly say that part of MOBAs was not fun.” “You learn a lot…About game design, about player reaction, and a lot of the skills are interchangeable.” As many of you know I’m a big fan of the MOBA genre of games. MOBAs, or Massive Online Battle Arenas, are games such as Defense of the Ancients 2, DotA 2, League of Legends, LoL, and Heroes of Newerth, HoN. Each time has five players, with teach player controlling their own hero. The basic goal of all three games is to destroy the enemy team’s “throne” to win. It’s more complex, but that’s the basic idea behind MOBA games. While MOBAs and MMOs are very different they both…
TOR TV: Dont GO !
Last week we featured the movie a movie Moves like Twilek from the German artist groundhouse. Today we have another music video from this guy featuring a guy dancing in a robot suite 😉
BioWare releases answers to SWTOR Community Q&A
This last community Q&A, BioWare had to put off posting the answers to the questions. Now they have finally released them along with this statement: Two weeks ago, we asked for your questions and unfortunately, we had to delay posting the answers to the Q&A until today. Please note in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we have edited some questions for clarity. We have now opened an official thread for next week’s Q&A, which will stay open until 2pm CDT on April 24th, 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. If you want to discuss any of the answers given, please use this Forum thread! So here is a snippet of the Q&A. To read the full list of questions, visit the official post from SWTOR.com. BlackMink: Could you please explain SWTOR’s threat mechanics?…
Fresh out of a PvP Team Meeting from Georg Zoeller
Are you happy with SWTOR PvP or like many of us, do you still feel like there are some things missing or lacking? Here’s what Georg Zoeller had to say about a team meeting over PvP at the BioWare headquarters: Hey guys, A few additional notes on this topic, fresh from a meeting with Gabe and the PvP team. (a) Expertise difference between combatants is the single most important factor in time to kill in PvP. Having zero or little expertise on your gear (e.g. pure PvE gear) is the primary reason for people to experience a sped-up time to death in Game Update 1.2. While it was quite viable pre-1.2 to bring your Rakata or Columi gear without any added expertise into PvP, the increased focus on expertise in the PvP track of gear has made it much harder to compete with that equipment compared to even the entry…
Zombies in Space- Coffin Comics Fun
What is BioWare trying to tell us with this recent (the first) world event? Rakghouls are trying to infect everyone and they take a striking resemblance to zombies, as many have pointed out. Zombies in space? It wouldn’t be the first time a video game had done this. Coffinshaker from Coffin Comics has a real funny cartoon about SWTOR and the current world event going on- the Rakghoul Invasion. He also used this as an opportunity to talk about a current theme in games today- zombies: Heh, didn’t mean for a double swtor posting this week, but I wanted to get this out there before the rakghoul invasion event ended. Pretty cool stuff though! Reminds me of the lich plague in wowcrafts just before WOTLK came out. But what’s the deal with zombies anyways? They seemed to have gained quite a bit of momentum in the last few decades. Hell,…
The Lost Island Flashpoint Guide
The Lost Island is the new Flashpoint in the Game Update 1.2. If you haven’t had the chance to check it out yet, try to get yourself in a group after you read this guide (so you know what you’re doing). It’s open to both factions and it also has a normal and Hard Mode for level 50 players. It’s a lot of fun and I really like the story that is involved as well. In the story of the Lost Island, we are taken to a hidden island on Ord Mantell where we are called to end experiments by Mad Doctor. So anyway… what’s this Flashpoint all about and how do you succeed in it? First, be aware that this is a Flashpoint full of encounters that require you to move a lot. You want to be ready to move in any instant and don’t just stand around staring…