From the developer blogs, we have some very useful personnel files that tell us a bit more about some of the SWTOR crew in upcoming operations. MESSAGE SOURCE: Lord Krovos RECIPIENT: Admiral Ranken REGARDING: Additional Recruitment MESSAGE READS: As you requested, our recruiters have secured four additional personnel to serve as flight crew in our forthcoming operations. I have collected their relevant data and my own notes below. They are an unorthodox lot, but I am confident we will find use for them all in time. NAME: Aven Geth SPECIES: Human AGE: 25 HOMEWORLD: Dromund Kaas RELEVANT SKILLS: Experienced shield technician. Has demonstrated admirable skill in combat situations. NOTES: Geth was officially discharged from the Imperial Navy under unclear circumstances unrelated to his mission performance – some kind of political maneuvering, no doubt, and nothing worthy of our concern. His eagerness to prove himself and return to official Imperial service will make him an enthusiastic asset….
SWTOR
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…
SWTOR Guide: The Galactic Starfighter Pike/Quell Battle Strategies
The Pike/Quell starfighter is designed to do maximum damage when you use missiles and torpedoes. The starfighter can be equipped with two types of missiles or secondary weapons that make it possible for you to use a variety of strategies when in battle. Most of the strategies used with the Pike/Quell are long-range combat oriented with some dogfighting capabilities. You can equip the Pike/Quell with loadouts that will make it difficult for your enemies to counter your attacks and there is a missile for all types of situations. Since it’s hard to get requisition, it’s a good idea to know what type of components you want for your Pike/Quell in advance. Knowing a little about the ship and what it has to offer will help you make the best decisions and that is what this guide has to offer. Pike/Quell Basic Weapons Strategies As you get accustomed to flying your…
SWTOR Bounty Contract Week Is Back!
If you missed your chance last month to participate in the SWTOR Bounty Contract Event, it’s making a return! All classes level 15 and up will be able to participate in this event. You will get rewards and exclusive items for completing these contracts. You also get a certificate you can use at the Cartel Bazaar vendor. Here’s some info on how to get started in case you have not done it before. SWTOR.com has some tips: The Bounty Brokers Association needs you! The BBA have posted too many contracts for their regular membership to handle and are asking anyone Level 15 and above to answer the call of bounty hunting between December 10 – 17, 2013. Interested? We thought so! Here’s how to get started: 1. First, travel to the Imperial or Republic Fleet, which is reachable by your ship’s galaxy map, transit shuttles, or the Emergency Fleet Pass….
Master SWTOR Galactic Starfighter: A Guide
Now that we have the new expansion Galactic Starfighter, SWTOR players old and new are looking for ways to survive in this fast-paced and hectic game environment. You want to succeed in your challenging battles and progress forward so you might need a few tips. You don’t want to end up as that pilot who dies all the time so here are some tips to help you master SWTOR Galactic Starfighter: Know your ship- this is first and foremost one of the most important things you will be able to do. Your ship is your tool, inside GSF. You need to know it inside and out. A lot of this will come with practice and just playing a lot. But you need to know the basics of the ships. So take time to examine your ship for abilities and components. You need to know everything you can about your ship’s…
How to Level Fast in the Double XP Weekend
Double XP weekend is here again and this is a great time to level up any alts or get your main toon to max level, or bring in friends and family over the holidays and help them get leveled up to max as well. If you take advantage of all the potential experience boosts, you could be looking at: So you’re looking at… 100% for base xp gain +20% for being a subscriber +10% for being in a guild +25% with a boost multiplied by 2 for the XP weekend You also get double the legacy xp perks for pvp and class missions. I believe the number was 310% for that and even higher with guild bonus. Sub bonus was already accounted for so you’re looking at: 100 + 25 (xp boost) + 30 (legacy perk) + 10 (guild bonus) * 2 = 330% With a potential for 330%, you…
EA’s Star Wars Game Deal will be 10 Years Long
A lot can happen in 10 years and for Star Wars gamer fans, we’re hoping this means good things in the way of some new games from EA. Remember that deal they made with Disney that gave them exclusivity to Star Wars games? Well, we have found out now it’s actually for the next decade. Eurogamer tells us a bit more about this: Fortunately it sounds like none of EA’s new Star Wars games will be movie tie-ins aping the new Star Wars films, the first of which appears December 2015, directed by JJ Abrams. “We’ve done movie games over the years and we wanted to make sure that we weren’t doing a movie game – i.e. a game based on the movie,” EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said at a UBS conference (transcript by Seeking Alpha). “The beauty of the Star Wars franchise is that it’s so broad and…
Galactic Starfighter Changes SWTOR PvP [Plus Domination Video]
12-vs-12 dogfights in space are coming in December. Are you ready? Now that sites are free to talk about and publish stories on the Galactic Starfighter content, we’re seeing more and more info release each day to help us prepare. This is how space battles should have been from the start if you ask me. Gamespot speaks about Galactic Starfighter in SWTOR: Considering the importance of space battles in the Star Wars universe, it was disappointing that ship combat was given such a cursory role in Star Wars: The Old Republic. After all, I can’t imagine A New Hope without the Battle of Yavin, which led to the destruction of the Death Star. (A useless gesture? I think not!) The Old Republic’s single-player on-rails battles looked the part, but they didn’t capture the essence of galactic warfare. With Galactic Starfighter, that’s set to change. And that’s just the beginning of the positive feedback…
TorTools – SWTOR Translator
We love bringing you news of cool SWTOR tools and gadgets so here’s a neat little find: TorTools Ability Translator This tool created by a SWTOR player and fan was created to find the equivalent texts of the game between the English, French and German clients. He used dataminingn with the help of /u/swtor_miner and XeNTaX’s swtor fan. The tool has abilities names, descriptions, talents and maybe a few other generic texts for now and is growing. As explained on the website: This tool allows you to predict the impact of any stat change on your character, or determine what stats are currently the best to stack on your character. First select your class and level, then input your stats. If you wish, you may also use the “Possible change” column to enter possible gain/loss of a stat to compare the results. When you are done, hit the CALCULATE button…
Discussion: Improving SWTOR PvP
PvP in SWTOR has long been a controversial topic. There are some who love it, there are some who hate it and everything in between. A recent post in the forums talked about how to improve PvP and it was written by a self-confessed old WoW PvPer. As someone who has also played hardcore World of Warcraft PvP, I can see a lot of their points as valid. However, SWTOR is a different game and I try to avoid any comparisons between two different games since it’s really different playing fields here. It’s apples and oranges- so comparing WoW PvP to SWTOR PvP just doesn’t stack up for me. However… there are some things that you can learn from doing PvP in another MMORPG, such as WoW that you can take with you into new games that you play like SWTOR. So with the spirit of that in mind, let’s…
New Starship Pet from Amazon Cartel Coin Cards
As of today, there is now a new pet being issued with you buy Cartel Coin Cards. It’s confirmed with Amazon card purchases to US customers and some players are reporting the same thing from Best Buy cards but I have not tested this yet. 11/12/2013 UPDATE: The SWTOR Cartel Coins bundle now features an Imperial Scout “S-12 Blackbolt Starship mini-ship. All redemptions on SWTOR.com made after 11/12/2013 at 10AM PST will get the new mini-ship rather than the old pet. You can see this yourself at Amazon: 11/12/2013 Important Note: SWTOR Cartel Coins bundle now features an Amazon exclusive Imperial Scout “S-12 Blackbolt Starship mini-ship. KEY INFORMATION: The Amazon 2400 Cartel Coins Card comes with a unique rotating in-game item. Key Redemptions after 11/12/2013 receive an Amazon exclusive in-game mini-ship, Imperial Scout “S-12 Blackbolt Starship To activate your 2400 Cartel Coins Card, follow these instructions: Go to www.swtor.com/redeem-code and follow the…
News from BioWare – Mercenary and Shadow Top Three Answers
We’ve been in a bit of a slow phase when it comes to new news from Bioware about SWTOR but now we have some good stories coming from the devs as we rev up for 2.4. These are long, detailed and interesting posts to the official forums from the Bioware staff that help us know a little more about why they are doing some things that they are doing and what we can expect in the future. Here are some threads you need to check out if you have not already. STAR WARS: The Old Republic – Mercenary Top 3 Answers! Here is a snippet of this post: Overall, we feel that Mercenary/Commando DPS is in a fairly good place; however, we also feel that Mercenaries/Commandos could bring more to an operation as far as utility goes and that the classes pulling higher DPS than Mercenaries/Commandos are doing a bit…
SWTOR Voss Kingpin Bounty Contract Guide
To do the SWTOR Voss Kingpin Bounty Contract you are going to need to head to the planet Voss where you will be hunting Eryn Talosa. In this bounty you will be given information from your contract, probes to track your target and information on where to release those probes. Eryn Talosa will either need to be killed or captured to complete the contract. You will find your contact, Sama Zo, on the bridge in Voss-Ka. Talk with Sama and then you will receive your mail containing the bounty target. You will want to release your probes near the bridge (there are a lot of trees so it’s going to be difficult to track) as this is the best chance of getting a clear shot. You will need to get the Priceless Voss Cultural Artifact from inside the Tower of Prophecy. To “borrow” the artifact you will need to interact…
Free to Play Isn’t Play for Free
Many industry experts said that SWTOR could be setting the stage for a new F2P model for MMORPGs. Other said it would be the last subscription-based MMORPG and that they expect future games of the same caliber to be based around F2P models. That hasn’t exactly happened yet. While there are more free to play MMORPGs than ever before, there are still games coming out with subs, at least for now. And this brings up a great conversation about free to play MMOs. While a game may be labeled “free to play”, this doesn’t make it play for free. You still may end up needing to pay for certain features or items you want in the game. And you might have to pay for features that subscribing members don’t have to pay for. The upside is that you only have to pay for the features you want and you can…
Majestic Planets of SWTOR- Cool Art
There are few things I love more than fan art. Here we have art made around the 20 planets that currently exist in SWTOR. And we just might see it grow when there are more planets added! It’s really a cool concept and I love how he chose to implement it. From LordXidiin on Deviant Art, we have the Majestic Planets of SWTOR. Here is the description telling us more about this design: Inspired by a similar League of Legends montage of the champion profile pictures: kamekpwns.deviantart.com/art/L…, I present to you the cavalcade of planets in Star Wars The Old Republic. These are the worlds of our lives in TOR. From left to right, the 20 planets are: Balmorra, Hutta, Corellia, Coruscant, Quesh, Tython, CZ-198, Ord Mantell, Belsavis, Dromund Kaas Oricon, Nar Shaddaa, Makeb, Tatooine, Korriban, Ilum, Taris, Voss, Alderaan, Hoth “Go then, there are other worlds than these…” “”You must…
Germany Cantina Tour Thumbdrive Assets
The latest Cantina Tour just happened in Germany and like the others, they gave out some awesome thumbdrive assets once again. The great thing about following these events is that we seen things at one event that might not have been revealed at another so it’s an extra little sneak peek into what is coming up soon.
Oricon on PTS
Lots of good stuff still to come in the Summer of SWTOR. For example, Oricon is now on the PTS. This means we all get to see a touch of what this new area is going to be like. This will be an actual zone, with quests and new story. This is a welcome surprise for many players who may have been growing a little bored with the current game content. Fresh content is always a good thing, right? Oricon is where you confront the Dread Masters at the end of the planet story/weekly. The two operations “Dread Fortress” and “Dread Palace” are based here. In the first operation, you kill Dread Master Brontes. Second operation, you kill the other four Dread Masters and Dread Council. It’s supposed to be coming with 2.4, probably in October but we don’t know for sure exactly when this game update will launch. Here…
Republic CZ-198 Jump Guide
Are you looking for instructions on how to do the new daily area CZ-198? Well, ask and you shall receive! I never cease to be amazed by how awesome SWTOR players and fans are. Here we have an excellent guide on imgur that walks us through this area. The game has several platforming puzzles where you do get a reward and then others like this that are just for fun. But for many players, the reward is just completing it.
THE OFFICIAL UNOFFICIAL SWTOR PLAYER SURVEY
Do you want the opportunity to share how you really feel about SWTOR, the classes and the storyline? Would you like to see stats on what real players think of the game versus the stats that BioWare gives out? Well, now is your chance! From the post on Reddit: PLEASE UPVOTE FOR VISIBILITY, SELF POSTS YIELD NO KARMA, RESULTS MUST BE THOROUGH FOR IT TO BE A PROPER SURVEY https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-h14ZOP1vEPO-3G-SNqnCNm1T521qaTShAUB-AcM_fQ/viewform PLEASE FILL OUT ALL QUESTIONS, AND WHEN SPEAKING OF SPEC E.G. DARKNESS OR MADNESS, USE EMPIRE VERSION, SO NO RESULTS ARE DUPLICATES. Results will be posted next sunday. This survey is set up via Google Docs so it’s really easy to complete and submit the questions. You can take your time and answer at your own pace but be sure to get it in before the deadline if you want it to count torward the results that will be read…
SWTOR Developer Update: Warzone Arenas
There was a BIG update from the SWTOR developer blog today. It’s all about PvP- and we’re excited to share this with you today. Here are the highlights: Arena PvP play is coming with deathmatch-style gameplay, where the only objective is to defeat the enemy players first. The setup will feature 4v4 where the best out of three rounds wins. Three Arenas currently exist: Corellia, Tatooine, and an Orbital Station There will be a deterrent for those who try to stalemate a match in the form of a poison gas cloud. Ranked Arenas will feature both a Solo and Group queue in Game Update 2.4. They’re getting rid of 8v8 Warzone The target testing date for PTS is August 16th so those on the test realms won’t have to wait long to see it. And while all of this is pretty exciting, here’s the real highlight of the update: But…
SWTOR Community Cantina Chicago Details Emerge
IIt’s another SWTOR Community Cantina and we are finding details from the new thumb drive and exclusive info being released to those who were present. Lucky for us, the fansites and news sites who are there are releasing some exciting sneak peeks of what we can see to come soon in SWTOR. I really love that Bioware continues to hold these Community Cantinas and get the community and fans involved. TORWars has some great details from the Chicago Community Cantina and exclusive thumb drive assets. Their gal at the event, Jean, shared some pics from the thumbnail which you can see over on their site and also some info about a new Operation or Flashpoint with all the palace concepts, bad guys and it appears, a new boss. And what about a new mount? That’s something that gets players pretty excited. Well, it sounds like we’re getting one of those,…
SWTOR Companion Guide: Treek
We are super excited about the new SWTOR companion, Treek. We’ve written about her here before and we’re super excited to tell you now how you can get her for yourself! This cute little female Ewok is the companion that everyone wants and lucky for us, BioWare has given us several ways to obtain her. In this blog post from staff, we learn of the different ways to get Treek companion: Our first new Companion Character since HK-51, Treek, arrives with Game Update 2.3: Titans of Industry. This mysterious alien mercenary is available for all character classes, and can be earned in-game or purchased directly from the Cartel Market. To help clarify these different options, here is an explanation of the different means to acquire Treek. All methods begin with acquiring Treek for a single character: From the Cartel Market: The first step to gaining Treek is to purchase the…
Some SWTOR Players Not Happy about Ewok on Cartel Market
Recently BioWare revealed to us that Treek, the new Ewok companion from Game Update 2.3, will be coming to the Cartel Market in August. But as the word spread, it sounds like some players are not as thrilled with the news as BioWare may have thought. Just Push Start tells us about how some SWTOR players are not happy with BioWare’s decision to put the Ewok on the Cartel Market: When the Ewok companion was originally revealed on the Public Test Server, many found out that one of the ways to get the new companion is by having the legacy level of 40 and be able to pay one million credits. A lot of people were pleased to that decision as it gave players motivation to play and level their legacy level up to get the cute companion. However, when the news broke out that Treek will be making its…
Relics of the Gree Achievement Guide
Relics of the Gree event is back and Dulfy, in her typical awesomeness, took some time to put together an achievement guide so rather than write my own, I decided to bring you hers since she beat me to the punch and it’s already thorough. With the return of the event, there are also some newly added achievements.