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…
swtor
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 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
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…
Player Harassment in SWTOR – Inaction and Consequences
We’ve talked about player harassment here before. It’s an issue in SWTOR. It’s an issue in MMORPGs. It’s an issue in video games. It’s an issue on the Internet. But what can be done about it? Now that is a question that has a lot of different answers. When we look at all the different ways in which harassment can occur, it becomes and even more complicated issue. So let’s look at SWTOR alone for the sake of this post. How can player harassment in SWTOR be handled better? There are some players who will say the current system in place is working as intended and that you just need to get used to it and move on if you encounter problems while playing the game. Then there are others who will disagree and say that more needs to be done about player harassment in the game. Xam Xam has…
An Open Letter to the Creators of the SWTOR Cartel Packs
Hyperspace Beacon has a few things to say to BioWare. Actually, they have a bit of a bone to pick with the SWTOR team. And he’s not alone in this one. There are many people out there who agree, as the comment section will show and I have to say that while I am a fan of the game and have been since the beginning, he makes very valid points on this one. There are some seriously annoying flaws with Cartel Packs and while this isn’t the first time it’s been said, the points are presented rather well. So what’s the beef? Well, here’s part of it: “I am disappointed by the execution of the latest cartel packs on many, many levels. It was difficult enough for me to accept these lottery boxes in the first place. It concerns me that the best looking and most desired items in the…
SWTOR – The Biggest Comeback in PC Gaming History?
Some of you who have been around with us since the very beginning (pre-launch even) will know that SWTOR today and SWTOR then are like two different games. Sure, the premise and many of the elements are there, but it’s different in a variety of ways, all of which we think are for the better. This is just one more way that BioWare shows they listen to the players and also that they want to make great games that people truly enjoy. If something isn’t working, you tweak it until it does. They don’t just abandon their projects like many will do. BioWare really came a long way with SWTOR and we’re very glad it’s still with us today and we’re happy to have been with it since the beginning. PC Gamer is calling it one of the biggest comebacks in PC gaming history. Here’s a snippet of a piece…
SWTOR 4.3 PTS online today
Tait Watson just informed the community that BioWare are working to bring the 4.3 PTS online today. Expect servers to be up around 11AM CST Game Update 4.3 PTS | 02.25.2016, 09:10 AM Hey everyone! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that we are going to be working to bring the 4.3 PTS online today. We are aiming for around 11AM CST, but that could change depending on a few different variables. Right now, I don’t imagine it will change. Character Copy is currently offline, but will be available once the PTS is. Keep an eye on the PTS Forums, as any further news and updates will go there. Thanks, and see you out there! -Tait Character Transfers are now available!
New Side Project In Case You’re Bored in SWTOR
Every now and then we come across something that just really gets your giggles going. This is one of those types of posts. User djcecil2 posted to Reddit about how he had found a new side hobby in SWTOR, complete with pictures. Of dead players… See for yourself: I’ve found a new side hobby while playing the game. Taking pictures of dead people. It’s really quite hilarious! More than one commenter noted the dead faces’ resemblance to “O faces” which will probably lead you down a path of NSFW imagery and links. But honestly, it is pretty funny. How many times have you seen a dead player in a hilarious position? Sometimes it’s just the way the corpse falls and other times it can be an actual glitch in the game, like a body falling partly through the scenery, but it always makes for some laughs. I know this is such a…
SWTOR Livestream Updates
SWTOR Community Manager Eric Musco, just made an update about changes coming to BioWares Livestreams. Apparently the users over at the official Star Wars: The old Republic Forums, don’t like the story Livestream hosted by Charles Boyd. There for team is shutting it down and will try to do a vblog that will be hosted on youtube instead. Check out the full story below: Livestream Updates | 02.24.2016, 01:16 PM Hey folks, Thanks to all of you who have posted feedback on our Livestreams. Based on your feedback we have some changes planned. The monthly Producer Livestreams, scheduled the second Thursday of each month have been well received as we are able to address community concerns and offer information into what is coming – so that is going to continue in its current form. The Story Livestream hosted by Charles Boyd, offers insight into the upcoming story chapters. Unfortunately, this…
Is Star Wars Rebels Making Old Republic Canon?
Since the Disney buyout of Star Wars, there is one thing that’s been bothering fans and that is the direction of the story line. Many Star Wars stories have just been thrown out completely. Some of the real classic stories are still around under Legends but so many good stories are just gone. There’s so much more that could be done with Star Wars and it seems like Disney isn’t interested in changing that. There is one exception to this rule, however: Star Wars Rebels. It looks like Rebels might be bringing back the most beloved EU story canon – Knights of the Old Republic. Nerd Union has written a great piece about this. Here’s a few of the reasons they give: The ships in the holo when Princess Leia brought supplies They Keep Developing the Mandalorians The Great Scourge of Malachor For the full reasoning behind these hints, read the full article,…
How BioWare Makes Use of Livestreamers for SWTOR
You might remember when BioWare was promoting KotFE that they brought in several well known live streamers and live video people to help promote the new expansion. They had YouTube content creators as well as popular Twitch streamers talk about SWTOR to their own fanbase. They also seemed to talk to outside streamers from other games about trying SWTOR and also introducing it to their audiences. It’s not a bad strategy, honestly. It’s something that most companies will do in a time like this but some will say it failed for BioWare in this scenario. It doesn’t look like it paid off how BioWare would have hoped because they aren’t using that tactic anymore. It’s common practice for companies to experiment with different marketing tactics to see what works and this wasn’t a bad idea in theory. I work in marketing and I know the power behind brand ambassadors and…