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Inquisitor's Roadhouse

Category Archives: previews

SWTOR Guild Summit Gives Us Plenty to Look Forward to in the Old Republic

06 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by anexxia in official announcements, previews

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

legacy system, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR

Most unfortunately for me, I was in meetings at work all day while  the SWTOR Guild Summit was in progress, without even time to check the twitter feed, except at lunch, to see what nuggets of information about the next big content patch were shared. But thanks to the many attendees who liveblogged from the event itself or while watching the livestream, I was able to get caught up pretty quickly.

First and foremost, I’m excited that today’s maintenance brings with it our next patch, which brings with it, those super top secret and awesome color crystals we heard about last week. I KNEW hoarding all those credits would eventually come in handy…other mentions of note:

  • Friends of Star Wars Free Trial
    Starting today, and only for a few weeks it looks like, SWTOR players can invite three (3) of their friends to take part in a 7-day trial of the game. During this trial period, invited players can explore each of the four Origin Worlds.
  • Server Group Finder Coming in Patch 1.3
    This is one of those much debated issues, and I’m glad with where they landed on this. The group finder feature will be introduced in the 1.3 game update, and will be limited to your server.  This makes me incredibly happy. Yes, expanding a group finder to a larger server pool would mean potentially shorter queue times, but having played WoW with both server-only and wider population looking for group tools, I can emphatically say I preferred the ability to get to know folks on my own server (and the inherent accountability for behavior) that went along with the server-only looking for group.
  • Ability to kick AFKers from Warzones
    That’s right, a Vote to kick system will be added in patch 1.2, allowing folks to kick out inactive players (you know, those people who stand in the corner for Huttball.) Will be interesting to see what they come up with to prevent abuse of kicking people who aren’t actually inactive (kick able to be cancelled by moving character?)
  • Ability to do 8-man Warzone premades, with groups able to persist between matches
  •  Lots of Legacy Unlocks!
    • Level to 50 with a species and you unlock all class variations of that species across both factions (i.e. yes, you can play a Sith Pureblood Bounty Hunter.)
    • Completing Chapters in your class story unlocking abilities across your characters. Example of unlocking Force Choke on all your characters after completing Chapter 3 on your Sith Warrior.
    • Social ranks will unlock some abilities too, such as ability to dance with your companion or new emotes
    • Jetpacks for Bounty Hunter, other classes receive rocket boots for a short duration sprint type ability.
    • Sprint moved to level 1. I am buying this for every alt. EVERY alt!
    • Mailboxes and the Galactic Trade Network on ships, so you need never return to the fleet again.
    • When character transfers come, the higher of the two legacies will take priorities, which means you won’t lose out on your high level legacy by transferring to a new server.
    • Ship droids will sell a voice restraining-bolt for certain mouthy ship droids.
    •  All these unlocks and rewards are retroactive, i.e. when the patch hits, your existing characters will automatically have access to all of this. you won’t miss out by having already leveled to 50.
  • Guild Banks coming in 1.2, with up to seven tabs available. Future patches to include a Guild calendar and some sort of “guild advertising” to help guilds recruit new members.
  • More vanity pets confirmed for 1.2, but we already knew that, didn’t we? 🙂

For full coverage of the event, head over to Darth Hater.

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November Fansite Tour Highlights

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by anexxia in previews, video

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

fansite tour, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR, SWTOR collector's edition unboxing, SWTOUR


While most of us Star Wars: the Old Republic fans were sitting at home watching the Imperial Agent (not Smuggler as pre coffee me wrote) progression video you see at the top of the page, a number of lucky fansite publishers were packing for a trip to Austin for Bioware’s second SWTOUR fansite tour.

Thanks to Darth Hater’s SWTOUR link roundup, I was able to live vicariously through these other bloggers, and gleaned a few interesting tidbits on PvP (which seems to have been the current content sharing focus):

  • Guild versus Guild operations are limited to 24 players. But it seems that # may not be set in stone.
  • In unbalanced open world PvP zones, such as 100v20, the smaller group will receive some sort of buff to assist them.
  • Warzones are always 8v8, and pull from your own server, and you can not go in with a full premade team.
  • Operations (raids) are expected to take about 3 hours.

The TORWARS team has a couple of videos from the fansite event, including this CE unboxing. It’s a good thing I can’t upgrade to a CE without losing my spot in the early access line… Enjoy!

Tantalizing SWTOR Tidbits from New York Comic Con (NYCC)

16 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by anexxia in Comic Con, previews, video

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

NYCC panel coverage, Signs of War, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR

We’re starting to get spoiled as far as Star Wars: the Old Republic news goes these days. We kicked off the weekend with the above “Signs of War” video and a new Operations overview added to the Game Systems page on the community site, and then all the NYCC SWTOR coverage started to kick in!

Live coverage of the Main Panel and the Q&A panel was shared via:

  • Darth Hater (main panel liveblog and Q&A liveblog)
  • Corellian Run Radio
  • TORwars

Here are some of the prime info nuggets I saw thanks to the many intrepid live bloggers/tweeters…

Modification System
As the game currently stands, you can modify a high % of items. Lets you keep old stuff longer, especially iconic anesthetic armor. Keep your favorite look. High level mods difficult to get. More details later, mods and how they work are still being worked on to make it less complex.

Morality and How Romance Can Affect Dark/Light Side Affinity
Q: Is romance a problem with the Jedi Knight?
A: Erickson: Choices have to be hard. If you’re dark side, your commitment will be tested. A huge amount of Jedi fall to dark side because of romance. Three levers influence morality – social pressure, companions, your morals.

Sith Pureblood Inquisitor confirmed as a race/class combo.

Contract, Please!
Voice actors locked into long term contracts, will not change. Why is this a big deal? If you were a vanilla WoW horde player, and had to eventually live through the WotLK transformation of Lady Sylvanas from strong leader to bubbly cheerleader due to a change in voice actor, you will understand.

15 Flashpoints Available at Launch
Devs state there will always be a Flashpoint available to you as you move through the leveling experience. And promise more details at launch. Conflicting reports as to max level versions of flashpoints available to you at max level (level 50.)

Can Shuttle to Other Origin Worlds
If you and your buddies choose different races, it is possible to take a shuttle to another origin world after a short time of playing (30 mins) to help them quest. Thus no need to agree on starting race combos in order to play together.

SWTOR Companion Spotlight

23 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by anexxia in companions, developer blog, previews, video

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

companion characters update, companions, Star Wars: The Old Republic, SWTOR developer blog

Gamespot got a scoop on the latest Star Wars: the Old Republic news with the release of a Companion Q&A article and the above Star Wars: the Old Republic — Developers Dispatch video yesterday. As with every recent video release, this one left me anxious to find out more and get into the game and start customizing my character experience. It will definitely be interesting to see how one’s actions will influence the companion’s affection levels and resulting behaviors and story.

This video gave us a nice look at how Inquisitors will be making the best use of their companions in battle– letting them run on in ahead of us and take a beating, as we stand in the back, looking cool and shooting purpley lightning at our enemies. Mwahahahaha.

Ahem.

Their Q&A was with Game Director James Ohlen, who gave some insight into how players will be able to customize their companions:

Players are able to customize the appearance of their companions in two ways. Because companions are full characters with inventory slots, players can change the equipment their companions are wearing. You can give your tough-as-nails Mandalorian warrior companion some badass Mandalorian armor. Or you can put her in clothes reminiscent of Princess Leia’s famous gold bikini. Players can also change the skin color, hair, and facial features of their companion characters.

Ohlen went on to confirm that companions will have their own class, and will level up as players do, and will gain additional skills as they progress. However, players will not be able to choose advanced professions for their companions.

Today’s SWTOR.com community updates also focused on companions, with a Developer blog on Companions as well. I appreciated the examples they showed of how we will be able to customize the appearance of our companions, as often *my* idea of customization doesn’t mesh with the limited amount of options available in many games for customization. The Mako example had a pretty wide range. Unfortunately, I don’t think there will be a ton of variation available for the Khem Val, but I think I can live with it.

After this big Companion update, I hope this means we’ll soon have a Jawa addition to the Companion pages on SWTOR.com…

BETA Weekends Incoming!

31 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by anexxia in BETA, blogs, official announcements, previews, video

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

BETA weekends, Eternity Vault developer's walkthrough

Lord Vader Sparring with a fledgling Jedi KnightPardon my absence, but I had very important business to attend to — Wrenz and I were the entire Empire cheering section at a recent Jedi Training Academy at Disneyland. See above for the photographic evidence of Lord Vader giving a fledgling knight a little light saber action.

I was psyched to see @Rockjaw‘s announcement on twitter that BETA weekend invites were going out today, and suffered the crush of disappointment upon not finding one in my mailbox. I shall be crossing my fingers that other Mac Bootcamp users will be in there and testing and documenting any difficulties we may have once the game launches…

And to all of you who got in to play this weekend, I am both happy for you and incredibly jealous. And I can’t wait to hear about it!

Thanks to being on vacation and mostly offline for a week, then catching up with work, I’ve fallen behind in my Star Wars the Old Republic news, but here are some of my recent favorites news bits…

  • The Eternity Vault Developer Walkthrough released late last week gave a good idea of what the raiding game play will feel like. And I have to say, I liked what I saw. Especially those adorable little heal bots flitting about healing players. So adorable! And have I mentioned recently just how anxious I am to be shooting out purpley lightning?
  • Darth Hater is hosting a live Q&A tomorrow night. Great opportunity to pick the team’s brains about what they learned and played at PAX. Oh yeah– and they also filmed the final day’s PAX SWTOR panel.
  • Ask a Jedi had a nice post on how the item modification system will allow RPers and other stylish players to retain the looks they want without sacrificing the power their character level allows.

P.S. This one’s an oldie but goodie (and watching it this weekend made me even more impatient to get started playing):

Eternity Vault demo, Guild Testing, and Changes to Cross-Server Chat

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by anexxia in guilds, official announcements, previews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cross faction chat changes, Eternity Vault demo, Gamescom coverage, guild testing

Lots of interesting news tidbits over the last 24 hours or so…still no release date, mind you, but at least we have “several months of BETA weekends” to possibly look forward to…

  • The BiowareTV archive from yesterday’s Gamescom coverage has a brief live demo of the Eternity Vault raid. I can’t wait to be dishing out my own force lightning against sentry robots…
  • Also announced yesterday (though via the forums), guild testing is coming soon. And if you are looking for some assistance in finding a guid that’s the right fit for you, I’ve got just the post you need.
  • Devs clarified around a recent change to the ability to talk cross-faction — i.e. players may no longer talk cross-faction in the server’s general chat settings. Devs noted the made the change after seeing the griefing behavior too many of us have gotten to know and loathe in other MMOs, devs said “putting the onus on the user (“you can just /ignore them”) is not our idea of a quality game experience. “

SWTOR at Gamescom

13 Saturday Aug 2011

Posted by anexxia in previews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alderaan Warzone, bioware, Gamescom, PvP

In just a few short days, we’ll start to see some more Star Wars: the Old Republic news thanks to EA and Bioware attending Gamescom. Per the SWTOR community site, in addition to the starting area game play that has been previously available, they will be showcasing “demonstrations of a small portion of the Eternity Vault, a high-level Operation or raid.”

I’m probably most looking forward to hearing the feedback from the SWTOR community members who applied to test out the Alderaan player-vs-player Warzone. Like many of my gaming buddies, I’ve spent a good amount of time in the past PvPing, and can’t wait to get a sneak peek of what it will look like in SWTOR. Hopefully, that will be some of the content included in the BiowareTV feed.

Gamescom Showfloor Hours:

  • Thursday, August 18th: 10:00AM – 8:00PM CEST
  • Friday, August 19th: 10:00AM – 8:00PM CEST
  • Saturday, August 20th: 9:00AM – 8:00PM CEST
  • Sunday, August 21st: 9:00AM – 6:00PM CEST

NOTE: CEST is 9 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), so the action will be happening during night owl hours for us West Coast folks.

Current Specials

  • SWTOR Patch Notes — Game Update 1.6: Ancient Hypergate
  • Fall Hiatus: Coming Soon to a Roadhouse Near You
  • The Reconsolidation Begins!
  • How Was the Grand Acquisition Race?
  • Investigating the Grand Acquisition Race
  • You Have Failed me for the Last Time, Qyzen Fess!

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