Back in January, BioWare launched a contest, were players should upload SWTOR Movies to Youtube. 3 winners would each win a powerful gaming PC plus valuable in-game rewards from BioWare. Ten runner ups will receive a GeForce GTX 960. Here is the verdict: BioWare and NVIDIA are excited to announce the winning video entries from the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – Knights of the Fallen Empire “Build Your Alliance” contest! Thanks to you, our players, for sharing your fight against the Eternal Empire – from intense lightsaber battles to dramatic story moments. Check out the winners below and watch the full playlist of videos here: YouTube Playlist A big congratulations to these top three winners: 1st Place: Jonathan Winkler 2nd Place: Инга Куклина 3rd Place: Danilo Wachsmuth Plus, a round of applause to these runner ups: Дмитрий Ялама Alex Thomas Julien Hélias Joel Argersinger Holly Montgomery Natthaphon Phonyiam Cristian Ceoroiu Rodrigo…
SWTOR
Eternal Empire Recon Walker changes comming to SWTOR
Eric Musco just informed the community that The Eternal Empire Recon Walker, previously a rare drop from Star Fortress, will drop in Eternal Championship and become bound on legacy. Hey folks, I wanted to pass on some information regarding a change to the Eternal Empire Recon Walker that is coming in Game Update 4.4. Currently, the Walker is a rare drop from The Exarch in Star Fortresses. We are making two changes to the mount. First, the Walker will now also be available from an Eternal Championship vendor. Second, we are changing the item from Bind on Equip to Bind on Legacy. If you have an active GTN sale at the time of 4.4’s release, this will behave normally. However at the time of sale or expiration, the item will become Bind on Legacy. Thanks everyone. -eric
Regional Character Transfers now Available in SWTOR
Eric just informed the community that players can transfer characters between NA and EU servers for 1500 CC. Character Transfers – Important Update | 04.26.2016, 03:54 PM Hey folks, Character Transfers are once again available! As a part of the maintenance we just had, we removed the restriction on Regional Transfers. Players are now able to transfer from their server to any other server. Here is the updated pricing: Transfer within the same region: 1,000 CC Regional Transfer: 1,500 CC Thanks everyone! -eric
The Academy Ep 10 & 11 -“Gearing and Stat Optimization in 4.0”
Gearing and stats can be a confusing concept to a new player. This is just one more great benefit to follow The Academy series from swtorista. In the latest episodes, 10 and 11, she talks to us about these specific points. These are great episodes that delve more deeply into important aspects of enjoying SWTOR. If you know someone who is new to the game, or thinking of picking up SWTOR, we highly recommend you point them in the direction of the Academy. Even if you’ve been playing for a long time, you might still appreciate these videos so go ahead and give them a watch/listen. Here’s what these two episodes are all about. Gearing up your character can be one of the most daunting tasks in the game. The first half of this episode talks about how to mod your gear, and the second half talks about stat optimization…
SWTOR: Actions Taken Against Patch 4.3 Exploiters
As we mentioned yesterday, there is a major exploit going on in SWTOR right now. Eric Musco took on the forums and informed players on the patch 4.3 exploit that was going around and has since then being fixed. Hey folks, As many of you may have heard rumor of, there was an exploit which was introduced in Game Update 4.3. We have since addressed the issue and the exploit is no longer possible. However I wanted to share some details on what happened and what action we are taking. Without going into too much detail, there was an issue tied to certain players accounts which allowed them to very easily create large quantities of credits through use of in-game mail and trading. We got reports over the past few days that players randomly received very large sums of credits and this was instrumental in helping us find isolate who had…
An open letter to the SWTOR players
SWTOR Producer Ben Irving posted a rally nice open letter to SWTOR Players on the official forums. This letter address some of the concerns players have had with Knights of the fallen empire. Hi there! My name is Ben Irving, Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I don’t often make posts in the forums, in fact, this may be my first ever post. Despite that, our whole team, myself included try to digest all of the internet for SWTOR information – The forums, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Recently there have been questions and concerns around the quality of our releases and the ongoing support for SWTOR and I wanted to stop by to address those concerns. First off, I want to apologize for some of the issues you have experienced in the last couple of months. The monthly chapter release schedule is new and it has come with some…
SWTOR Character Transfers – Important Update
Bioware’a Eric Musco took on the forums, announcing the cost of Character Transfers have increased to 1000 CC from the previously discounted 90 CC. Chekc it out: Character Transfers – Important Update | 04.19.2016, 12:49 PM Hey folks, Heads up on a change that is coming next Tuesday (4/26). Leading up to the Fallen Empire launch, we greatly reduced the cost of Character Transfers from 1,800 CC down to 90 CC. This was done to accommodate players who were interested in transferring characters to join their friends who were returning to or joining the game. This was a limited time offer which will be coming to an end. Starting Tuesday, the new price will be 1,000 CC which is adjusted to below the former rate of 1,800 CC. We feel this gives our players the option to Transfer at a reasonable rate while being in line with other services we…
BioWare teases new planet in SWTOR
BioWare just tweeted a screenshot of what looks like a new planet in Star Wars: The Old Republic. It is still unknown if it is a fully new planet for players to explore, or how it fits in to the story. The planets name is “Vandin”, and so far we can’t find any info on it in the Jedi achieves or on wookieepedia. That means we might have a new Voss on our hands. BioWare tends to be really good at building up new stories, so I am excited. Here are the official news: Prepare to journey to the mysterious planet of Vandin on May 5 in ‘Profit and Plunder’: https://t.co/8uBfvbBsS8 pic.twitter.com/rOsHdhlQo6 — The Old Republic (@SWTOR) April 18, 2016
SWTOR: April 19 Server Patch – Patch Note
BioWare took the servers down to fix a few bugs. Here are the patchnotes: Warzones Fixed an issue that caused groups to be unable to queue properly. Resolved an issue that was causing the Ranked Warzone Arena Leaderboards to display Character information incorrectly following a server transfer. Personally I was hoping to see an update to the credit exploit currently roaming. We encourage you to De-list your valuable items from the GTN, and await an Official response from Bioware.
SWTOR Dev Blog: The Eternal Championship
The SWTOR team has published a blog post regarding the upcoming Eternal Championship comming in Game update 4.4.: Welcome to the Eternal Championship, a new daily experience that will pit players against some of the galaxy’s most notorious fighters. Below Zakuul’s sparkling exterior lies The Arena Grand, a decadent venue where citizens of the old world indulge their basest desires as spectators of brutal gladiatorial events. One such event is Mayhem, where beginning with Game Update 4.4 “Profit and Plunder” players may compete to earn the title of Eternal Champion. The Eternal Championship is a solo-able PvE experience that will be available to all players who have played up through Chapter IX “The Alliance” of Knights of the Fallen Empire. By traveling to the Platform 6 Cantina on Zakuul and speaking with fight master Dominaire, players may enter Mayhem at the Arena Grand. There they will fight through multiple rounds of increasingly…
SWTOR Chapter 13 – ‘Profit and Plunder’ Teaser
The SWTOR Team over at BioWare has just released a new teaser trailer of the upcoming Chapter, Plunder and Profit coming on May 5th: BioWare™ and Lucasfilm today announced the next chapter in the episodic storyline of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ – Knights of the Fallen Empire. The Profit and Plunder chapter will be available on May 5 along with a new multi-level Eternal Championship challenge that requires increasingly more courage and skill as you progress. The newest chapter in Knights of the Fallen Empire gives the Outlander an opportunity to turn the tides against the Eternal Empire in a clandestine heist to plunder Arcann’s secret treasury. In a high-risk mission to recover the Eternal Empire’s vast riches, players will partner with the galaxy’s most infamous thieves: the suave Bounty Hunter, Gault Rennow, and the female Twi’lek pirate, Vette. Prepare to risk everything as you embark on a covert…
SWTOR’s New Direction
SWTOR is changing. Those of you who have been around with us since the early days will note that it has changed a lot. This is bound to happen in any game that sticks around for years and the longer a game is around, the more it might change. Sechari of iamsechari.com wrote about this on his blog recently. He’s a big Star Wars fan and writes about his love of Star Wars and Star Wars games, to include Star Wars Galaxies, Knights of the Old Republic and of course, SWTOR. In this post specifically, he tells of how he had to say goodbye to SWG (along with the rest of us) and how he later made his way to SWTOR and got hooked. But it’s not all fairytale romance, of course. SWTOR has had its ups and downs and in some ways it has and continues still to change…
April’s SWTOR Producer Livestream Coverage
Here is the rundown of yesterdays Livestream Coverage. When: 2-2:30 PM PDT (about 1 hr from this posting) What: Get the latest scoop on what’s happening in and around the game, and get a first look at Chapter 13: Profit and Plunder! Where: Youtube mirror: NOTES Agenda State of the Galaxy Chapter 12 Subscriber Rewards Eternal Championship Chapter 13 Wrap Up State of the Galaxy Eternal Championship now live on PTS. Ingame Chat/Mail- We have automated system to combat spam but if you see it still report it to help us. Chapter 12 so far has been great, small patch on Thursday to fix some minor bugs. Force focused user focused chapter but non-force users will find it enjoyable as well. We have not revealed the fate of Khem Val. Ak’ghal Usar is not meant to replace Khem Val. Chapter 12 brings Odessen Proving Grounds (8v8). This will be the…
SWTOR World PVP: The Battle of Oricon II
If you have not had the chance to see what great world PvP really looks like, then you will want to check out the video below, uploaded by Swtorista of a world PvP event this weekend. While it’s probably not typical of average world PvP that usually is 8v8 or so, it does look like a good time, lag and all. Here’s a video from Swtorista that shows some world PvP on Oricon. [Note: Video contains large unfiltered voice chat group.] Who: PvP enthusiasts What: Open World PvP for the Scare Bear title Where: Oricon (Instance 1) When: Saturday, April 2nd @ 8pm EST This is what world pvp looks like in SWTOR, when it happens! The goal of this event was to try and kill other players for an achievement. If you skip to later in the video you can see the huge number of players, causing the game…
SWTOR Still Performing Well
SWTOR is the second largest US based MMO. It was the 4th most top grossing pay-to-play MMO by revenue in February of this year. While there may be haters claiming the game has failed, or that it’s no longer relevant, the stats just don’t support this. Star Wars: The old Republic is doing well and is considered a huge success. With the release of the newest Star Wars movies, we can probably expect the game to continue to grow. Superdata research shows the top grossing games on a variety of platforms. Here we see the stats ranking SWTOR 4th in its category. Top Grossing Pay-to-play MMO Games by Revenue, February 2016 1 World of Warcraft Activision Blizzard 2 Lineage I NCSoft 3 TERA: Online En Masse Entertainment 4 Star Wars: The Old Republic Electronic Arts 5 Blade & Soul NCSoft You can tell that to the haters saying the game is…
BW Austin is Doing Animation Work for SWTOR
This fun tweet from Paul Marino, Lead Narrative Designer at BioWare Austin lets us all know they are doing some new work for the game. This lines up with the voice acting tweets we saw not too long ago as well so we can be sure some new content is in the works. What exactly they are working on is still uncertain, although many fans have speculated. Animation team & I are off out to EA Burnaby/The Capture Lab to grab some mocap for #SWTOR! Canada here we come! — Paul Marino™ (@PaulMarino) March 16, 2016 And that’s not all. Charles Boyd, lead designer of SWTOR, also had a tweet to share: @SortaRevan @nikkoliferous Not confirming anything, but we just happened to have Saresh in the booth today, actually 🙂 — Charles Boyd (@Charles_Boyd) March 16, 2016 Could it be season 2, new OPS, new combat animations? New class skill animations?…
Bioware on Squelch Abuse in SWTOR
Apparently some guilds in SWTOR use something called squelch abuse. The squelch system works as an anti-spamming system, that automatically revokes all chat/mail privileges for a player if someone were to send out the same message repetitively – Think credit sellers etc. This system has also been expanded to reporting spam, and apparently people are coordinating to abuse the system to report non-spammers of spamming to trigger the system to grief players they don’t like. Eric Musco went on the forums to post Bioware’s stance on it: Sucks to be Squelched | 03.21.2016, 12:59 PM Hey folks, Let’s talk a little bit about our squelch system that is in the game. This system was implemented quite some time ago as a method for players to not only avoid filling up their /ignore list, but to also help in getting a lot of those pesky Credit Sellers out of chat. This has been very…
SWTOR: Server Downtime: 22 March 2016
All servers will be unavailable on Tuesday, March 22nd while BioWare perform back end maintenance. DATE: March 22nd, 2016 TIME: 5AM PDT – 9AM PDT (12:00 – 16:00 GMT) VERSION: N/A DOWNLOAD: N/A Timezone(s) Start Time End Time UTC Offset Wellington March 23, 2016 01:00 am March 23, 2016 05:00 am +13:00 Australia/Sydney March 22, 2016 11:00 pm March 23, 2016 03:00 am +11:00 Australia/Adelaide March 22, 2016 10:30 pm March 23, 2016 02:30 am +10:30 Australia/Brisbane March 22, 2016 10:00 pm March 23, 2016 02:00 am +10:00 Tokyo March 22, 2016 09:00 pm March 23, 2016 01:00 am +09:00 Australia/Perth, Hong Kong March 22, 2016 08:00 pm March 23, 2016 12:00 am +08:00 Mumbai March 22, 2016 05:30 pm March 22, 2016 09:30 pm +05:30 Moscow March 22, 2016 03:00 pm March 22, 2016 07:00 pm +03:00 EET March 22, 2016 02:00 pm March 22, 2016 06:00 pm +02:00 CET…
Changes to the SWTOR Cartel Market — Tuesday March 15 2016
Here are the weekly cartel market items on sale for the week of March 15 – March 21 2016 . Price Change Old Price New Price Percent Change Normal Price Helpful links APPEARANCE OPTION: AFRO 25 100 +300% 100 EMOTE: CHILLY 50 200 +300% 200 X-3 TECHMASTER ARMOR SET 600 1200 +100% 1200 EMOTE: FREEZING 50 200 +300% 200 UNLOCK: CARGO HOLD ACCESS 200 475 +137% 475 STRONGHOLD SPACER’S DECORATION BUNDLE 1280 800 –38% 1280 ORLEAN LE-5 1500 750 –50% SITH RAIDER ARMOR SET 1200 600 –50% 1200 MAJOR WARZONE XP BOOST BUNDLE 180 45 –75% 180 APPEARANCE OPTION: DREADLOCKS 100 25 –75% 100
Charles Boyd Doing New Voiceovers for SWTOR
So what’s new in the world of SWTOR? Will we see new content any time soon? A sign from the Twitterverse says yes. Charles Boyd, lead designer and creative for SWTOR announced via Twitter that he was headed to LA again for the next round of SWTOR voiceover work with the ” amazing” cast of talent. This is exciting news for fans because it always means more content is being created. You can see that post here: It’s that time again – heading to LA for the next round of #SWTOR voiceover with our amazing cast of talent 😀 — Charles Boyd (@Charles_Boyd) March 13, 2016 What do you think they could be working on recording right now? Could it be KotFE Season 2 stuff? It’s really all speculation at this point. All we really do know is that we will get more content. Whenever conversations like this get started,…
SWTOR Mod in Progress for Empire at War 2
Do you play Empire at War? If you’re a Star Wars fan, then here is some news you might really enjoy. This is a mod for Star Wars Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, based on the Star Wars the Old Republic era and online game. Birb & Bean and its founders, Barcuda13 and elfenvy, are hard at work and hope to bring a new look to the Old Republic and the Forces of Corruption modding community with this project. It’s called The Old Republic: Ultimate War and it sounds pretty cool. You can learn more about it here. Here are some basic updates/info: RELEASE DATE: The mod is planned to be released sometime in late 2016. Already released is the Space Alpha, which is a small preview of the mod. It has a few Space skirmish maps and some units we have coded in already. We plan to update…
The Academy, Ep 5 -“How Do Companions Work?”
Another episode of The Academy is out and this time we get to learn about companions. I’ve told you before how much I love these videos. They are actually recorded from a podcast and then set to video which is why especially in the first few, you also hear another voice talking with her or saying “mhmm” now and then. But anyway, they are really great, useful videos for anyone new to the game. If you have a friend or family member you’ve been trying to get into the game, or someone you know who has just started to play SWTOR, you definitely want to turn them on to these videos. So here in Episode 5, Swtorista talks about one of the most unique features of SWTOR – the companion system. Companions can do a lot for you in SWTOR but if you’re new to the game, you might have…
The SWTOR Eternal Championship will be Delayed
SWTOR Eternal Championship is delayed, and will not part of Patch 4.2. Read hwy below: The Eternal Championship | 03.04.2016, 10:27 PM Hey folks, We have been doing a lot of internal playtesting on the Eternal Championship and it is currently not at a level that we believe our players deserve. In keeping with our commitment to offer the highest quality experience possible with our latest expansion, we have decided to delay the launch of the Eternal Championship. We are focusing on overall balance, ensuring each boss fight is challenging, endeavoring to exceed quality expectations, and most of all, making sure it is a fun experience. Please note Bowdaar will also be delayed, but will continue to launch alongside the Eternal Championship. To help ensure we deliver on the deeper experience we promised, we have decided to make the Eternal Championship available on our Public Test Server (PTS) prior to…
SWTOR: PTS Warzone and Arena Changelist
Odessen Warzone and Rishi Arena is going through some changes on the SWTOR Public test servers. Here are a list of what has been changed this time: Odessen Warzone Performed a small optimization pass on Odessen Warzone visuals. Designer Note: We are expecting a slight increase in client performance while in the Odessen Warzone with this update. The update included removing the VFX that plays your team’s color while in a Control Point area. We are still performing additional optimization passes but wanted to get this out into the wild to see how it played. Control Points are active for approximately 90 seconds, up from the previous 75 seconds. Designer Note: We found that players didn’t have enough time to react to changes during a round and that this would allow more time for attackers to remove defenders. In Round 1 only the three middle Control Points (Defense Cannon, Cantina,…