Part 1 can be found here

I’ll start off from where I left off. Just remember these are all just my personal preferences. You may find another way to do things, so consider this just a heads up.

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((The RP XP with MJ #15))

This is what some RPers do in beta before trying out a Flashpoint.

 
Veetha stood as she was commanded, in the rain and darkness of Dromund Kaas while her master went inside to report to a representative of the Dark Council.

The platform on which she waited was a circular speeder taxi pad a few hundred feet in the air above the rain washed streets of the Imperial Capitol. There were no guard rails, only the speeder taxi she and Lord Tagious brought here. Veetha stood soaked, in the middle of the pad, her shoulders hunched and her fists clenched. A squat maintenance droid and its human handler stood nearby, the droid buzzing and squawking as it worked over some inane droid task. The human leaned against a short stack of crates he had yet to move inside where it was dry. He stared at her from under the dripping bill of his cap.

Veetha felt his eyes upon her, felt his hatred of her alien presence, but also felt his lust at her female form made prominent by the rain pressing her robe down against her body. She didn’t look in his direction, didn’t acknowledge him. She only waited, still, her eyes locked on the distant door.

“Whatsa matter, Rattataki?” The human shouted to her through the downpour. Distant thunder echoed his question. “Afraid of a little rain?”
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With the NDA lifted in TOR, I decided to take a big hit for the team and amassed around 70 hours of play time in the past week to get a good feel for the solo game-play.

First things first. Playing solo, or mostly solo, works very well. You will be faced with challenges that will need more than one player, yet these tend to be outside your story quest lines and, as such, can be bypassed.

Also, some content can only be completed solo when you gain your first companion at around  level 8 or 9. For those wishing to be companion-free and still play solo, you are going to have a real hard time at this game. Each companion is tailored for your class needs, and as such, will hit you hard if you try and play without them by your side.

I played solo on every class apart from the Imperial Agent. I had major concerns about the cover system on both the IA and on the Smuggler. After playing the smuggler, however, I have to admit I enjoyed it greatly. Its not all about sneaking up from behind cover. You have some good AOE skills early on that makes it play different from what I expected.

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Return Flight from Fan Summit #2

Quietly the embargo for the Fan Summit #2 dropped today. When I say quiet, I mean that we didn’t get an announcement about incoming media blitz. What we have gotten is a volume of posts that are making me try to prioritize for myself. Not only do we have the North American sites, we also have the European sites. Continue Reading »

In preparation for their Big Beta Weekend (I will not be using the acronym of that any time soon), Bioware is handing out tens of thousands of beta keys through various websites. Currently there are promotions running on mmorpg.com (20.000 keys being handed out – ~18.000 left at the time of writing).
 
Curse.com is also giving out keys and their giveaway is separated into North American and EU sections.
 
Massively is giving out keys on this page. I don’t know how many are left, but I appreciate the Eternity Vault screenshots :).
 
You should be following #TestSWTOR search on Twitter for the latest announcements about sites that are giving out keys.
 
Please keep in mind is that if you applied for testing on swtor.com before 11-11-11 you will be invited to the upcoming Big Beta Weekend no matter what and you will not need the keys from the sites above. The keys from the sites above are for those that are just now getting curious about SWTOR and have not had a swtor.com account before.
 

Today we have beta invitations going out again. This will be the third beta weekend, but it looks to be a limited invite. The servers located in US East Coast are the ones participating.

Today , 12:37 PM
Invitations are being sent for a weekend test this weekend! Sent Nov. 8: Beta Testing Weekend #3 Invites Who was invited: Testers from North America What was sent: Beta Weekend #3 Invites Server locations: US East Coast Invite status: We are currently in the process of sending these invites, and will continue throughout this evening.

All of the invites will be sent out through-out the day and finished by this evening and you should have them in your mailbox. If not, check your spam folder or check your beta testing status on www.swtor.com/tester.

Edit:

Some addition information has come out via Stephen Reid a bit ago.

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Beta Testing activity in Star Wars: The Old Republic is intensifying closer we get to launch date. The latest news is that French and German gamers have been for the first time invited into testing. I am not sure if they will be able to test in their own language, as was discussed a month ago when this was initially going to happen, but I am just glad that Europeans will get to have at least a small say with the future direction of the game. Along with this wave of invites there was another wave for English speaking gamers like those in Canada, UK and USA. All of these were invites for regular game testing that is an ongoing affair. Larger in volume, yet shorter in duration are Beta Weekend tests and today we saw invites sent out to all countries that SWTOR will initially launch in. This is the second Beta Weekend test and we hope this will become a more regular happening in the 9 or 10 weekends left before the game launches. The 2nd beta weekend will last from 7th-10th October, 2011. It will end on midnight October 10th for the US testers and some time early morning on the 11th for the EU testers (because of the time zone difference). All of the invites in the aforementioned waves have now been sent out and you should have them in your mailbox. If not, check your spam folder or check your beta testing status on www.swtor.com/tester.
 
As a help for the community, Stephen Reid and the community management team have setup a permanent thread on the forums that will track all the major beta testing happenings. They will try and update that forum thread each time a beta testing invite wave is about to go out (or has just gone out) and they’ll try and keep us updated on the most important information about what’s happening with SWTOR beta testing. If you are anxiously awaiting for your chance to test The Old Republic make sure you bookmark this thread. Here’s the most important info found in that thread today, October 4th, 2011.

Invites that were sent last week (week ended September 30th)
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada and select European countries
-What was sent: General Game Testing invites
-Server location: East Coast USA
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent
-Invites that have been sent this week

General Game Testing invites
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada, France and Germany
-What was sent: General Game Testing invites
-Server locations: East Coast USA (North America testers); EU servers (France/Germany testers)
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent
-Beta Testing Weekend #2 invites

All invites for Beta Testing Weekend #2 have now been sent. Please check your email (including spam folders) and login to swtor.com/tester/ to see if you have been accepted for this weekend’s testing.
-Who was invited: Testers from the USA, Canada and all European launch countries (see list here)
-Please note – We will be re-inviting all testers from Beta Testing Weekend #1 (AKA ‘Squadron 1020’) as promised.
-What was sent: Beta Testing Weekend #2 invites (October 7th to 10th – early hours of 11th for EU)
-Server locations: East Coast USA (all testers)
-Invite status: All invites in this batch are now sent

September was not a particularly good month for beta testing of The Old Republic. There were problems with executing the planned Beta Weekends and there was considerable downtime because a new build was being prepared for testing. This caused even further delays to larger scale European testing. With only 1 and a half days left unti lthe end of September we get news that will probably make up for all the misses that happened this month. Chris Collins, the recently employed European community manager, posted on the official forums that a batch of invites has been sent out today to EU players. Here’s a snippet:

Today, we’re excited to announce that we are sending out a batch of invites! In particular, this initial batch marks the start of a series of invites to our larger European player base, who get the chance to join the Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Testing program and provide feedback during the months up until launch.

To further the excitement it seems that tomorrow we might get even more news about the upcoming beta weekends and testing in general. Everyone is hoping that his means an all out widening of the beta testing program so that a lot more people get to experience SWTOR before launch (and help splash those nasty bugs). This was hinted at in Chris’ forum post, but also, Stephen Reid tweeted the following:

We sent both NA and EU invites in the last 48 hours. More news on testing is coming tomorrow.

Considering all of the above I think tomorrow’s update will not be disappointing.

Today in the land of yellow posts came a very important statement from Stephen Reid about the potential for scams in gaining beta testing access to SWTOR, and the truth behind it. I want to highlight this bit of information because I want to make sure all the community is aware of the possible risk involved with such a scam.

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Today via Stephen Reid on the official forums and twitter we got an announcement from Bioware that they decided to re-invite the testers of the first and only (so far) September beta testing weekend.  Here Stephen gives us a great explanation to the reasoning and the situation behind the change of not inviting weekend testers back for another go.

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