Happy SWTOR Two Year Anniversary from the Community Team

We just passed the two-year anniversary of SWTOR. The funny part is today is my son’s birthday and I remember two years ago wondering which was coming first- my baby, or launch. For those of you who have been with us since the early days, you know we spent years prepping for this. It’s hard to believe sometimes that the game has been out two years already. Anyway, the SWTOR Community Team had some things to share with us all to commemorate the occasion. You can read the whole thing on their blog here. But let’s look at some snippets. From Courtney “The three things come to mind when I think back two years ago to the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic: Blood, sweat, and tears. Okay, maybe more like coffee, that tingly feeling behind the eyeballs, and adrenaline. But it is safe to say that I will never…

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Consolidated Bugs List

With a new major game update, comes lots and lots of new bugs. Here is a list of the stuff that the BioWare developers are aware of. Honestly I expected worse or more bugs with this game update, considering how buggy the PTS was, so I am fairly happy about the patch so far! Post 1 Source CourtneyWoods Unintended Patch Download | 10.02.2013, 09:38 AM Hey everyone, I have an update for you. Unfortunately, if you started downloaded the 12 gig patch on Monday, you will have to finish that download. There were multiple different builds that were incorrectly deployed that afternoon and you will have to download the 12 gig download to get the up to date version of the game. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to those affected. I know this isn’t the ideal solution but this is the only safe fix to the problem other…

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Class Representatives Update!

Eric Musco Has taken on the forums, to update the community regarding the future of  the Class Representatives. Since BioWare have not yet made any actual class changes since the initiative began, the dev team have chosen to put the class Rep initiative on hiatus after the Assassin/Merc answers. This will go on until their next set of class changes that apparently comes with game update 2.5. Does this mean that Game update 2.5 will be a mini update? Who knows. The Forums are going mad about how this is the end of the game and all – You know how it always goes. Personally don’t care one bit about this. Always thought the Class Reps system wasn’t much more than a way to placate the uber-whiners on the forums with a “yes, we’re listening to you!” bone tossed to them. Eric and the rest of the CM team always will…

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Scheduled Maintenance: Server Consolidation

Tuesday August 13th is the day BioWare will be closing down the APAC servers. All servers will be consolidated into West Coast North American servers from that day onward. CourtneyWoods On Tuesday August 13th,2013 we will be performing scheduled maintenance for consolidation of APAC into West Coast North American servers. There will not be a patch to download during this downtime. Details are as follows: APAC and NA-West Coast Servers will be unavailable from August 12th 10PM PDT (August 13th 5AM UTC) until August 13th 10AM PDT (5PM UTC). To minimize downtime for other services, NA-East Coast and European Servers, SWTOR.com, and the game launcher will remain available for several more hours. We anticipate they will come down on August 13th between 12 AM and 4 AM PDT and will remain unavailable until 10AM PDT (5PM UTC). During maintenance, updates and additional information will be posted on our Twitter account….

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Official Forum Class Representatives Selected

Eric Musco posted who would be class Representatives in the future. and its chosen representative. The voting have been on since last week, and now we have the winners. Check them out below: EricMusco Class Representatives Are Here! | 07.29.2013, 03:32 PM Hey everyone! First off, I want to thank everyone for taking part in voting for your Class Representative. Also, thank you to all of the candidates who offered up their services to their community! Without further delay, here are your first ever Class Representatives. Scoundrel – Marshmallow Operative – Morde_ Gunslinger – GalnarDegana (Geldarion) Sniper – Paowee Guardian – Andrew_Past Juggernaut – lMarlfoxl Sentinel – KeyboardNinja Marauder – Gudarzz Vanguard – mfourcustom Powertech – FeralPug Commando – Cashogy_Reborn Mercenary – odawgg Shadow – Kitru Assassin – Xinika Sage – Nibbon Sorcerer – Psirebral Congrats again to you the new Class Representatives! If you are one of the folks…

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Official Forums Class Representatives Announced

Eric Musco posted an interesting update to the official SWTOR forums yesterday. We will now be getting class representatives for the forums. Each representative will only serve for a term and then new representatives will take their places so it ensures there is some balance and rotation. Class Representatives are player elected and will not be granted any special access to the BioWare team. They will be used to help Bioware staff provide more information and community involvement on the topic of classes within SWTOR. What tasks will these forum class representatives do? What Will They Do? Upon the Class representatives being selected, we will release a schedule. On each scheduled date listed, the chosen representative for each Class will make a forum post in their Class forum with the top 3 things they want to have answered or commented on. Our current plan is to do 4 ACs each…

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Developer Dispatch: Legacy Achievements

With all the action yesterday with Disney closing down Lucasarts, We completly missed that BioWare posted a new Developer Dispatch. This time the topic is Legacy Achievements. Lisa made an extensive guide to this back in February wich you can find here. However, the article BioWare just posted does  good  job of explaining it as also. Achievement Completed: Breaking the Writer’s Block. Description: Wrote the first sentence of my developer blog. This achievement doesn’t reward me with a title, but it does increase my Galactic Reputation with the Community Team, so I’ve got that going for me! Game Update 2.0: Scum and Villainy introduces the Legacy Achievements system, a means of recognizing important accomplishments and milestones for your entire Legacy. Achievements are like badges awarded for completing content, defeating enemies, exploring new regions, and a whole lot more. The Achievements you gather are displayed in a new section of your Legacy panel,…

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Community Q&A August 10 – 2012

In this weeks Community Q&A Damion Schubert goes solo, and answers all questions you may have about the “Free to play” model. This will also be the last community Q&A in this format, as BioWare are changing strategy and will instread be focusing on bringing us more frequent and consistent developer responses in the forums instead. Check it out below: ButeoRegalis: Are subscriptions the only way to gain Cartel Coins (CCs) in the future, meaning, aside from the bonus coins we’re getting until the Free-to-Play option goes live? Can you purchase them without a subscription? Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): All players will be able to purchase Cartel Coins by purchasing them on our website and eventually in-game. These coins are used to buy various virtual items from the Cartel Market. Free-to-Play members can also use Cartel Coins to unlock certain game restrictions. Samohnat: Will Cartel Coins be available via…

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Scheduled Maintenance: July 24

As usual, BioWare will take down the servers for scheduled maintenance on this upcoming Tuesday July 24. The servers will be down from 2AM CDT to 6AM CDT, and when they come back up, players will have to download a patch. CourtneyWoodsHello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, July 24th, 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. This weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will be a patch to download….

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Commmunity Q&A June 12

This week’s Q&A went up yesterday, and  includes interesting  information regarding armor set development cycles, random loot tables, and more. Also an interesting piece of information is the fact we now get more character slots. Read the full thread at the official forums, or our Copy paste below:  Posted by: Community Q&A: June 22nd, 2012rong> Pargon: I’m curious about the development cycle for something like an armor set. Could you elaborate on the process you guys go through when designing and implementing that equipment? Ryan Dening (Lead Concept Artist) and David Hunt (Systems Designer):This is a very good and timely question as we have recently been refining parts of our approach and inspiration in response to the feedback we have gotten from our players. The first thing we do when designing a new armor set is to look at which class it’s for and what level or tier it is going to be….

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1.3 coming this Tuesday

We have waited and waited and waited, and finally it is here – Game Update 1.3: Allies will live this coming tuesday! Some people call this the “Jesus patch” as – together with the server merges, it should resurrect the game with it’s Aguement updates, ranked warzones and group finder! Let’s party! The patch is out same  day as ME3 Extended Cut, so expect a lot of downloading that day.  Posted by: CourtneyWoods Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing Scheduled Maintenance for four hours on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8 AM 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. Game Update 1.3: Allies introduces new features for all Star Wars™: The Old Republic™…

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BioWare: SWTOR subscriber numbers have remained steady

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…

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False Bans Reported in SWTOR Community

There seems to be a trend happening in the SWTOR community for the past week or two and I have to say that in all my years of gaming, I’ve never seen one quite like this before. For some reason, there is a relatively large number of players claiming to have been banned from SWTOR- some even with email “proof” – who were not actually banned at all. Most of the reports claim to be bans over silly things that get the community and other players in an outrage because they worry whether or not it can happen to them. Accusations are flying and gamers are getting paranoid, wondering if they will really be banned for such things or if they are supporting a game company that is a little too ready with the banhammer. But is any of it really true? Like this from the official forums: Originally Posted…

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The Guild Sphere: Aureus Knights

It’s the first day after the end of the last Beta session of Star Wars: The old republic. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. In today’s column The Aureus Knights took the time to answer our questions. Aureus Knights are a world wide community of online gamers. Although many members are MMO veterans from the early UO, EQ and MUD days, the members span all demographics and play styles. The guild strive for a fun, laid back and social gaming environment that anyone can feel welcome in and enjoy. read more after the jump. Where did your guilds name come from? Aureus is latin for Gold. So our name means Golden Knights. The guilds founders were sitting in EQ2 (the game where our guild was first formally created) and we wanted to create a name involving Knights but we didn’t want to be one of the million…

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SWTOR will not require Origin

It’s been a topic tossed around the SWTOR communities for some time and Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager for SWTOR finally clarified it once and for all on the official forums. SWTOR will not require Origin to be played: “Regardless of what other games may choose to do in their integration with Origin’s desktop client, here’s what our situation is: You are not required to use the Origin desktop client to download, patch or play the game client for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This applies whether you purchase The Old Republic via Origin.com or from a retailer in boxed form. You will not be forced to install the Origin desktop client. There are still various consumer benefits to the client itself, but it’s not required for The Old Republic.”   So there we have it, folks! The issue is done but surely, some people will still find something…

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Another look at the character selection screen and London Hands-on Event Impressions

Even though no news sites are allowed to posts images or write reviews about the UK Press Event a few pictures has already shown up. This one was posted by Stephen Reid, who buys his contact lenses online, via Twitter just before guests showed up: I expect many interesting reviews, pictures and movies to show up the comming weeks, until then, we have to settle for the hands on that was posted on the official forums Many of you are aware of the UK Community Event we’re holding at Gamerbase, where community members get some hands-on time with the game. If you got to play, we want to hear your impressions! If you’re one of the lucky folks who attended the event, let us know how it went for you and share your impressions with your fellow community members. I know everyone is eager to hear your stories, and the whole…

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Sean Dahlberg joins UTV True Games

Former BioWare Community Manager Sean Dahlberg announced on his blog that he has taken a position as Senior Designer at UTV True Games. In the future he will be working on a new MMO called Faxion. In his blog, Sean talks about his decision to go back into the developer side of games and what he likes about the company’s vision for Faxion and its emphasis on micro-communities. Break time is over! I requested a few weeks off before starting at my new job and I have to admit, it was nice to have a vacation. I think it’s the first one I’ve had in years that was stress and work free! But, as anyone who knows me can attest to, I can only have so much free time before I start needing to get back into the game. So I’ve made the jump back into the development-side as a…

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Consequences for leaking Information about Star Wars: The old republic

Sean Dahlberg explained to us on the community forum, what should be done, if you encounter any leaked information about Star Wars: The Old Republic. either on the official forum or any other website. He continues to point out the consequences for revealing information that has not yet been released officially by Bioware. These consequences range from a simple request to delete your post to being suspended from any Star Wars: The Old Republic ‘service’ indefintely. Below, we have listed Sean Dahlberg’s official responses. Consequences “”Being able to have the community help us test The Old Republic is very important and valuable to the development process. The Game Testing Program allows community members to give us quality feedback so we can make adjustments and have a highly effective service and entertaining experience when we do launch. Since we have some time until the game is complete, some of the information testers have…

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Species of Starwars: Trandoshan

Bioware just released a bunch of new screenshots for their Inhabitants section. The first one that caught My Eye was the above  screenshot of a Trandoshan. I personally used to play this race in Star Wars galaxies, so I thought it would be natural for us to cover this Species in this weeks “Species of Starwars“. Trandoshans (T’doshok in their language) were large, bipedal reptilian humanoids from the planet Trandosha (or Dosha). They had super-sensitive eyes that could see into the infrared range and the ability to regenerate lost limbs, although very slowly, and were anatomically built heavier and stronger than most humanoids, including Humans. They would also periodically shed their skin. Unlike some other reptilian humanoids such as the Barabels and the Ssi-ruuk, Trandoshans had no tails. The Trandoshans were a warlike species who allied early with the Empire, taking Wookiees as slaves. As a species, they were renowned…

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