So what would you do with 13,000 SWTOR screenshots from the beta? There are probably a lot of ideas you can come up with but will any of them be as cool as what this player did? Michael Guy (t0liman) created a fantastic SWTOR mosaic out of all of this screenshots from the final beta weekend. He captured over 24 hours of game time on the final weekend of SWTOR beta and also created a 35 minute montage video from the screenshots: This is how he says he did it: “Using “Foto-Mosaik-Edda” to do the heavy work of rendering the mosaic, I then reduced the size to fit the 10mb file limits for twitter using Photoshop (Plus, finding the point between juggernaut 200 megapixel posters and “instantly crash all apps in windows” with 8GB RAM, 400 megapixel’s, then working out how to resize 900mb PNG’s to 9mb, is fun) the…
SWTOR
Leia and Han Solo in SWTOR
While we have to admit that what this guy did is pretty cool, we also have to admit that it’s going to be very annoying to see loads of Star Wars movie characters running around the SWTOR universe, especially for those who are serious about their storyline and roleplaying. However, if you’re looking for something fun, here’s how one guy created Han Solo and Leia with the character creator of SWTOR. You can probably play around with the settings and controls and try to create other Star Wars characters that you recognize as well since there is so much customization available in SWTOR. He even tells you the slider numbers so you can make them yourself. And here’s some more fun from Starfleet Dental:
1.6 Million WoW players ‘could switch to Old Republic’ according to surveys
The battle between SWTOR and WoW rages on and as we get even closer to the launch date of TOR (December 20th) we continue to hear talk of WoW players who are or are not planning to jump ship and trade one game for the other. “Analyst house Lazard Capital Markets thinks World of Warcraft could lose between 900,000 and 1.6 million players following December’s Star Wars: The Old Republic launch”, as reported on Computer and Video Games. The stats aren’t really that surprising when you think about it. People are getting tired of WoW. It’s something we’ve written about many times and this also wouldn’t be the first analyst or expert to make such a prediction. The story explains: “A recent survey conducted by the firm in conjunction with Peanut Labs found that over 50 percent of 381 respondents have grown tired of Blizzard’s game.” This really isn’t a…
“BioWare Bets Big With the Old Republic” Says Fast Company
Star Wars: The Old Republic is scheduled to launch December 20, 2011 and BioWare’s expectation for its future is huge. With all the time and energy put into this MMO, BioWare bets big that it’s going to be a big hit. The SWTOR headquarters is located in Austin, Texas. This seems fitting to some since the Lonestar State has the slogan “everything is bigger in Texas” and SWTOR is one of the largest MMO to ever be released. Fast Company tells us how BioWare bets big with SWTOR. Is it a bet that will pay off in time for the company? BioWare has put 6 years of testing and debugging into the game and logged 4.6 million hours of beta testing. They are now ready to see if the efforts they’ve put into the game are going to pay off. Will gamers respond to this MMO the way they expect…
Will the Novelty of SWTOR Stand the Test of Time?
As we draw close to the biggest beta weekend in the history of SWTOR, we take some time to look at all the things that make SWTOR great. It’s an awesome game from a popular title wrapped up in a pretty bow with all the bells and whistles. The amount of polish that has been added to the game is the one thing that sets SWTOR apart from other MMOs that have come before and will likely come after as well. Without this polish and the Star Wars name, it’s just another MMORPG and for many gamers, that’s nothing so special after all. It’s the little details that make all the difference in SWTOR. The voice acting, the animation and of course, the story are all things that make this game stand out from so many others in the market. They make you feel that your character is more important…
SWTOR in the top five best selling pre orders
EA Inc.’s Star Wars: The Old Republic Collector’s Edition for the PC held in the top five best-selling pre-order products at Best Buy Co. Inc.’s online division this week due to high demand, reports Punch Jump, but then that’s not really a surprise to us here at all. This week it ranked #5 for best-selling pre-orders but I’m willing to bet the closer we get to the December 20 launch, the higher it will climb up that pre-order list. In fact, due to the massive beta testing weekend they just launched, I’m willing to bet a lot more people who have not pre-ordered yet will jump on the bandwagon to do so now that they get to check the game out for themselves. SWTOR is popular but it’s also not cheap. For some gamers, they need to try it themselves before they fork out that kind of cash on a…
3 Years with SWTOR Strategies: An Anniversary Post
As we approach our 3rd birthday here at SWTORstrategies.com, we look back over the years, the posts, the updates and the progression of SWTOR as a game. We are now closer than ever to a launch date, with less than two months before the game will be available worldwide. It’s an exciting time and we’re thankful you’re here to share it with us. We’re even more thankful to those of you who have been here for quite some time now. We’re excited to continue bringing you great Star Wars and SWTOR related content and we appreciate you for dropping by. In honor of the occasion, we’ve compiled a list of some of our most popular posts. Here are some of our most popular posts to date: New Game Mod Brings Star Wars and Call of Duty Together May the Schwartz be with You: Entire Star Wars “A New Hope” in…
New SWTOR Beta Build Returns Wednesday
Have you been waiting for game testing to return? If you’ve been bored waiting for the news that your beta build would be back up for re-download, then today is your day. The new SWTOR beta build is up; get ready to download. This message was posted by Allison Berryman today: Hello Testers! Welcome to the new testing forums! We’re excited to announce that the new build is being deployed! Today, you’ll receive an e-mail letting you know that the new build is available for play, and you’ll be able to log into the launcher and begin downloading the new build. Please make sure to remove your old installation before downloading the new one (see instructions below). European players: The servers in our European datacenter (Carth Onasi and Mission Vao) will not be available today. If you are European, we ask that you please roll characters on those servers when…
Huttball PvP Live Commentary – Jedi Guardian – NYCC
Our friends over at TGN TV have another SWTOR Weekly episode up and this one is a lot of fun, complete with footage from NYCC and a recap of TOR news from this week. We love the Huttball PvP live commentary video from NYCC and if you haven’t seen it, we think you will enjoy it as well. Check it out: Throughout this week, we continue to see more and more videos and stories from NYCC and since we were unable to be there ourselves, it is our great pleasure to bring these to you whenever we spot them as well. This video has a great “sneak peek” of Huttball, a PvP Warzone in SWTOR. It’s really a fun video with a glimpse of Huttball and hilarious commentary. “This is an objective game; not a killing game, folks!” Since I’m a sports writer as well as a video game nut,…
Impressions of SWTOR from a WoW Vet: Part 2
Yesterday I brought you a write-up from a Reddit user on his impressions of game testing SWTOR. It seems the post was popular enough that he decided to write up a part 2. Since his initial impression of the game were mostly positive (for which he received some criticism), he has added some downfalls of SWTOR to his Part 2. A snippet: Some troll-being yesterday said that Voidstar was quote “an abomination” which is far from an accurate portrayal of the state of that particular warzone. Voidstar is kind of like Strand of the Ancients in WoW. You’ve got to either blast your way through a series of gates or you have to defend against people blasting their way through said series of gates. Just like Strand there’s a time limit on the game and if the attacker wins, when teams switch sides, the former defenders have their time determined…
Darth Malgus Action Figure Coming From Hasbro
Are you a fan of Darth Malgus? Would you be enough of a fan to buy this action figure? Darth Malgus will now be an action figure, thanks to Hasbro. This is pretty cool news for any SWTOR or Star Wars fan and collector. Stephen Reid tweeted a picture of the action figure this week. ToyArk.com announced at the Hasbro Star Wars panel that Darth Malgus will be available as Wave 3 of the Star Wars Vintage Collection this coming April. Since he is expected to be a major character in the game, this is fun and exciting news. On their website, ToyArk also has some great slideshows from the Star Wars panel and some other SWTOR and Star Wars related news. It’s definitely worth heading over to check out their slides and stuff.
NYCC 2011: STAR WARS THE OLD REPUBLIC Panel
It’s what we’ve all been waiting for at NYCC- the Star Wars panel! What kind of fun, exciting info is coming out of there today? Fans are hungry for info and NYCC attempts to give us anything new they can at Friday’s panel. Newsarama has been giving us the best coverage to come out of NYCC and has this to say about the Star Wars Panel: BioWare Austin’s Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid led the panel, joined by Game Director James Ohlen, Writing Director Daniel Erickson, and Cory Butler, Live Producer. They went on to provide an overview of the game (in case anyone in attendance actually did not know already) and Reid explained the backstory a bit. “But we’re making an MMO, not a movie, and gameplay is very important to us as well,” said Reid. Those of us following SWTOR already know all too well how important story…
GDC Online 2011: SWTOR’s Georg Zoeller and Game Feedback
We’re getting closer to the SWTOR launch and we’re trying tokeep you updated on everything relevant and interesting about the game. At this year’s GDC Online Principal Lead Combat Designer GeorgZoeller demonstrated some of the tools that the team uses to analyze playerfeedback and data, and then he explained how, through sophisticated technology,the team can make appropriate adjustments to the game as it wraps up betatesting and prepares for launch. Massivelycovered this story and it’s nearly 1,000 words of info on the game, much of itstraight from Zoeller himself. Massivelysays: He detailed what content creationinvolved, starting with assets, including creatures (which can take up to manyyears of work), static geometry, dynamic objects, special effects, visualeffects, and animations. Testing has gone on for more than a year, and BioWarehas gone through several iteration cycles. Each time the devs test, they gainfeedback and make necessary improvements. This is interesting to anyone currently…
Stephen Reid interview on Newsarama
Star Wars: The Old Republic‘sSenior Community lead Stephen Reid did a live interview today with Newsarama. He talked about his launchbeard (no shaving until TOR launch), about the importance of story and how muchfans are really looking forward to it. He talked about how he likes to playSmuggler but is waiting for launch and that he enjoys the Bounty Hunter. There aren’t any big reveals planned for NYCC, apparentlybut there are some “visuals” on the way. Maybe that means we will see some newtrailers or something. Another interesting bit from the interview was thatBioWare intended to announce the launch of SWTOR at NYCC but things did not go accordingto plan. Newsarama has a livestreaming event cam at New York Comic Con on their website. The fullschedule is also listed on the home page. Stay tuned here throughout the weekend for more news from NYCC.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Will Feature Achievements at Launch
Many MMOs that we have come to love feature achievements andStar Wars: The Old Republic will notbe any different. However, the type of achievements will be a little differentfrom what you may be used to, at least at first. These are not your typical WoW-typeachievements. At this time, Daniel Erickson, the lead writer of Biowarestated that “achievements” would appear in SWTOR when it launches. However, theones that appear with the launch will be detailed achievements for doing heroicthings such as fighting the bosses on each planet. Just what kind of achievements are we going to see on ship? Erickson explains to DarthHaterat Eurogamer Expo: They’renot going to be the achievements, the crazy achievements that you have to placeeverywhere, that are like, “Hey if you drink 6 beers and fart in acantina,” those are not going the achievements to go in. Version 1 of theachievement system which go in, which is…
Guild Alignment Begins- SWTOR News
In other news today, BioWare announced that official Guild Alignment begins on their news page. The important bits: “With Phase 2: Alignment, we are introducing new features which allow guilds to set their allegiance with other guilds in The Old Republic. Now a guild leader, along with members who have the proper permissions, can select up to three guilds as either Allies or Adversaries, depending on their faction affiliation. Qualifying guilds that are marked as Allies and Adversaries of other guilds will have the highest chance of being placed in the game together, allowing these guilds to coexist on the same server. Another feature being implemented with Phase 2 is the ability for guild leaders and members with the proper permissions to invite friends to join their guild via email. You can start recruiting new members today!” So there you have it. If you’re a guild owner like me,…
EA at Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference: SWTOR to Release in March Quarter?
Or is it? I love to keep up withwhat is happening at EA and with gaming in general. Since Eric Brown,CFO of Electronic Arts, is at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, Iwanted to listenin to the call to see if any important infomraiton was disclosed about EA,BioWare and of course, Star Wars: The Old Republic, a huge source of thefinances of EA right now. If investor financial calls are not your thing, you’velucked out because I took a listen and I will pass on the important bits toyou. The conference happened at 1:10P PT / 4:10P ET and containeda lot of the usual boring bits. I entertained myself messing around on Twitter a bit and waiting forgood parts. One of the most interesting questions was in regards toSWTOR: Q:Can you give any updates on how pre-orders and awareness level are trackingagainst your milestones and what are some of the factors…
Empire to outnumber Republic 2-to-1 on PVP Servers?
Where’s the balance? The game isn’t even released yet and already people arecrying about imbalance. Is there a legitimate basis to this claim? A post on the official SWTORforums seems to think so. The poster, Aneu,brings up some stats and facts about the game so far in beta stage and hisconcerns for the current state of play. He pulls some stats from another threadon the forums that show a trend in number which favors the Empire to theRepublic. He then brings uphis concerns: “Thisis very worrying indeed. My main focus on this post is the pvp balance withregards to OWPvP and server balance. How is it possible to make balancedservers with these types of numbers? You have almost double the amount ofguilds going Empire, what will happen? Will Bioware make servers where thereare just Empire since there is an overflow of Empire guilds/members or will theRepublic be put up against…
SOE Says SWTOR Can Hit 2 Million Subscribers
As we grow closer and closer to the date that SWTOR will release, we hear more talk about subscribers, player base and just how many people we can expect to be playing the game. BioWare expect it to be so big that that are putting restrictions on the initial sale and release of the game. Now an industry expert says we might see 2 million subscribers. John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment believes that BioWare might see some big numbers with SWTOR. “It’s fair to say that subscriptions are likely going to be a strong component of revenue for the foreseeable future, although I don’t believe they will be remotely as dominant over time,” Smedley wrote in an exclusive opinion piece for GamesIndustry.biz. This is actually impressive news in the online video gaming industry where more and more games are going free-to-play, particularly over at Sony. Just today, SOE…
SWTOR vs. WoW – How They’re Similar, and How They’re Not (Infographic)
We often compare SWTOR With World of Warcraft. Some might ague that this is wrong as it is two different games in two different settings. While I agree with that argument, it’s only fair to say that World of Warcraft is the dominating MMORPG in the world and there for the only game to compare against when we talk new MMO’s, and there is no question that these two games will come head-to-head in the MMO battle of the decade. Gamefront.com has put together this chart showing some prevalent features and which of the two titles possess them. Check it out:
PAX Will Have a “Big Reveal” Regarding Companions
We’re all excited to hear all of the SWTOR news coming out of PAX this year but MMORPG.com has given us one more reason to get excited about PAX. In an interview with Rich Vogel, we learn some great things about the game as well as some things most of us already new. Still, it was a solid interview that’s worth the time to read over. The real big news came at the very end with a reference to a “big reveal” about companions at PAX. From the article by Carolyn Koh: “Companion characters will not be able to die,” said Rich, “we try not to let players do things that will hurt themselves. Companions can, however, be hurt, be captured, and not be able to adventure with your for a while.” There was more to the Companion system that I asked about, but they were saving it for a…
Stephen Reid Clarifies Details on Operations
Stehen Reid posted in the official forums to clarify some issues and details about Operations. “To clear some of this up… First of all, loot containers. After every boss is defeated during a normal difficulty Operation, every player will receive a loot container. Inside that container each player gets a chance for loot specific to them, or commendations that can be exchanged for other loot. So to be specific (because this seems to be confused by PC Gamer) that happens after each boss is defeated in a normal difficulty Operation, and not just once at the end of the Op. (There are multiple bosses in Operation: Eternity Vault for example.) Second, Gabe was misquoted a bit on the lockout thing (it’s a bit loud here on the show floor!). There are lockouts, but they are designed to be ‘flexible’. This means, for example, if I have killed Boss 1 in…
Giant Official Gamescom Coverage Links on the SWTOR Forums
If you want to keep up with anything and everything from Gamescom, then this official list on the forums will help you do just that. All you have to do is visit the link and then scroll down to the relevant day to find the links to information and coverage fresh from Gamescom so you can stay fully updated on everything. It even features old info from Gamescom 2009 and 2010. For 2011 you will find dates, schedules, timelines and of course, links to coverage of the events each day. Some Friday highlights include: Written:Huttball Preview: Here SWTOR Preview: Here Interview with Emmanuel Lusinchi (Written in German, Video in English): Here In Depth look at Huttball: Here Video:The Doctors Interview: (Starts around 4:20) Here Cliff Notes from it: – Not shipping with a built in Chat program. – Beta Weekends in the fall. – Guild Phase 2 is coming very…
Full Alderaan PVP Match on Video
This 20+ minute video from THE-FORCE.EU features a full Alderaan PVP match, mostly from the point-of-view of gunslinger as well as some views of Eternity Vault. You will see a whole PVP Warzone playthrough on Alderaan, Trailer for Huttaball, Some Footage from the Bioware Booth and some more gameplay from the Eternity Vault.
