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Yesterday was Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you…) and beside the Blue Ray version of all Star Wars films being announced we had a lot of TOR related news. European version of game testing has been announced. Conference call between EA financial management and the investors has been held and SWTOR was mentioned. This also produced an official release window for the game to be moved to the second half of 2011.
Click here to read about these news items in more detail

The upcoming PC Gamer May edition has a 6 page special on the Old Republic. PC Gamer staff had a chance to sit down and play the game for two days in an epic 17-hour long gaming session. They got to play the Bounty hunter and Imperial agent starting worlds as well as some PvP on Alderaan. This issue is infamous for its races/classes chart that mentions the Cyborg for the first time and that Daniel Erickson said is wrong to some extent. What I found interesting is that they clearly put the following stamp at the start of the article: “Release: Autumn 2011”. It is also mentioned that each class’ story is 3 times as big as KOTOR, which means that just the class stories are as big as 24 KOTORs.

Click here to read more about the author’s impressions of the game and to find links to the scans of the issue

It has been a week since fans of the Old Republic were able to play the game at the London event. As with any hands-on event, we were flooded with impressions and information from people that got to play the game. The cool thing is that most of these impressions come from your regular gamers and not the gaming press or fansites since very few got to be there (or are under an embargo). What I found encouraging that most impressions were very positive, even from people that used to be skeptics before. Here’s a compilation of the most important things we’ve learned from the event and surprisingly most of these are rather big and brand new revelations. Sources for most of these are the transcript of the Q&A after the event by DogHouseGamer and player impressions found in this thread on the official forum. I would also suggest visiting Moon Over Endor and reading their great hands-on impressions, or listening to Aartan Away podcast as they were also at the event.

• At this time companion characters are allowed in flashpoints and they occupy a live player’s spot (so if you have two players with one companion each in a group none else will be able to join unless a companion is “de-summoned”). It was said at the event that:
  

  CCs are powerful but they are not the same as having smart humans nor are they equal in power. So on a less difficult Flashpoint with amazing players or players that had a couple extra levels it’s likely possible to two man or three man them but I will say that when Alex and I (*Daniel Erickson) tried to two-man the Heroics on Dromund Kaas with our CCs we got stomped flat.

• There is a Social points mechanic. You get social points when you win multiplayer dialogue stuff. They’re things that say “hey, I’m a social guy. I talk to other players.” Social points will be used to purchase “thing you can use to socialize with”.
• In hard to reach or seldom visited places on planets there are Datacrons that can be collected and that will permanently increase one of your base stats. There are very few of these on each planet and are designed as an exploration reward. Kandycane is the first person ever seen to get one at an event.
• Daniel Erickson confirmed that players will earn titles as they progress through The Old Republic. Often cited examples were titles for Sith players including Darth and Lord.
• There are light side and dark side icons on the dialogue wheel if you are using the mouse. If you are using number keys to pick dialogue options, you’ll never see them. So if you hate the idea of choosing wrong, you’re going to be a mouse user for dialogue. If you hate the idea of hand holding you’ll be a number key player. Best of both worlds.
• The number of slots in a player’s inventory will be upgradeable, though it may take some saving in order to afford increasing your total slots. Reports tell that the first inventory upgrade costs 15,000 credits. For context, the average low-level mob drops about 20 credits.
• Codex entries will automatically fill in as players enter new areas, these will be essential for both the completionist and the lore-lover.
• Swimming is not implemented in the game and is not planned for launch! The explanation behind this is that there is no content associated to water surfaces and the feature needs a lot of man hours to be made properly, so they chose to put more important stuff in the game for launch instead. (Read the full explanation by Georg Zoeller here)
• Class quest answers are not arranged by Dark Side/Light Side but by class appropriateness. So the most “Boba Fett” response (curt, professional, all business) goes on the top of the Bounty Hunter. The most “Vader” on top of the Sith Warrior etc. So if you’re playing purely to your class fantasy you can just keep moving along easily. So in similar situations a Sith Warrior might have a “[Kill Him]” option as a first response but an Inquisitor might have it second and the first response might be trying to look deeper at the situation and discover what’s really going on.

Darth Hater got a tip from one of their forum visitors that May issue of UK PC Gamer has released what they claim to be an entire list of species and compatible classes in Star Wars the Old Republic. Here’s the list:

Humans: Can play every class.
Zabraks: Can play every class.
Miraluka: Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular
Sith Pureblood: Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor
Chiss: Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter
Rattataki: Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, Sith Inquisitor
Mirialan: Trooper, Smuggler, Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular
Twi’lek: Sith Inquisitor, Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Smuggler
Cyborg: Trooper, Smuggler, Imperial Agent, Sith Warrior, Bounty Hunter

This is a great piece of information to speculate on. We first see there are no Cathar on the list (which is going to disappoint a lot of furry fans …) and then there are the Cyborg. For me, a huge sci-fi geek, the prospect of having a Cyborg character is dream fulfilling. I can’t decide which would be more cool, Cyborg light saber wielding Sith Warrior (ala general Grievous) or a dashing Imperial Agent whose cybernetic implants are all the talk among the ladies. Prospect of having such character almost makes me change my mind and play Empire at start. My Trooper and Smuggler Cyborgs would have a dark backstory as to why half their body is metal and not flesh. I wonder though why they didn’t do Jedi Knight Cyborgs. I mean, Luke Skywalker could be imagined as cyborg with his robotic arm and all.

To prove that his list is just speculation and nowhere near final we have Daniel Erickson posting on the official forums. You can check what he had to say on our Dev Tracker page (I am just linking there to show off how you can now link to single posts on our Dev Tracker page) or you can just read his post bellow:

Hey Folks,

The species/class combo list you’re referencing is not accurate. If it does appear in the magazine, that’s unfortunate.

My guess is that an enthusiastic member of the press wrote down everything he saw in the character creation screen which, as we’ve stated often, is nowhere near final. Occasionally we’ll have species in odd classes or in all classes because of a bug or testing.

Hope that helps!

Daniel

I am waiting for one more week before I pronounce it as official, but it seems that Bioware is starting their pre-release information flood. Friday updates are becoming more informational and we’re starting to see mid-week updates as well. Coupled with the events season it promises to be an information filled summer for SWTOR fans. What this Friday update talks about specifically is how the design of advanced classes changed since they were first talked about and what Bioware based those changes on. There is a detailed rundown of all the advanced classes in their current state, given by Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer. We now fully see 3 healing and 3 tanking builds present. Very interesting thing to see is the choice they made with the Jedi Consular and Sith Inquisitor. These classes can spec so they can be healers or tanks (tanking abilities have been added in the meantime; since the last AC info was released). Since both these classes were basically cloth users I wonder how they made them tanks. High evasion plus heals to get aggro? I don’t see them as paladins either. I must admit I am curious to see how this works out.

What I have a feeling Bioware did is incorporate your classic trinity roles into the most commonly used classes; Jedi Knight and Consular and Sith Warrior and Inquisitor (or as you’d call them – force users). The other classes are getting non standard trinity options or what some would call soft trinity classes. So we get a ranged tank, healing rogue and a healing “hunter” (ranged rogue). Just the prospect of discovering how these “new” roles function is exciting for me.

Friday update also goes over the decision making process through showing two images created through metrics Bioware gets from test servers and game testers. The images show a three-dimensional map with all the spots gamers died at and a smaller two-dimensional map showing where people thread the most and what places are fatal for their adventure. That image alone helped Bioware determine that Smugglers were having problems in the areas of their primary class story and were able to tweak the difficulty. I must add that the 3D image looks like what is known among game programmers as representation of geodata. Geodata is map data of X, Y and Z coordinates of the game level that determines what players and other level stuff (foliage, buildings, NPCs, etc.) stand on and can’t “fall through”.

Kathy from Corellian Run Radio compiled a nice list of things we’ve learned from this developer blog so go ahead and check it out.

Over at Random House.com they have released the cover art and short synopsis of the authors plus, have given a sale date for us in the United States, thanks to Matthias I have recently learned that the German version is already for sale on sites such as Amazon.com.

The book “The Complete Vader”  is written by Ryder Windham and Peter Vilmur and is a book about the cultural impact Darth Vader has had on our society.  I for one look forward to reading this as the Anakin/Vader story is my favorite plot line of the whole Star Wars universe!

Synopsis

Star Wars: The Complete Vader is the definitive book on the history, myth, and cultural impact of Darth Vader. From his early development in the first Star Wars film by George Lucas, to the new legends created in comics, videogames, and novels, to his ongoing appearances on everything from television commercials to bedspreads, Vader presents a complete view in all his incarnations as the Dark Lord of the Sith. Going beyond the films to cover his further adventures in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the book combines new insight with exclusive interviews and photographs from the Lucasfilm Archives. Interactive reproductions of rare memorabilia fire the imagination, while pages packed with never-seen-before images explore the world’s endless fascination with the notorious Darth Vader.

It will be a hardback, have 192 pages and goes on sale for $60.00 on October the 18th in the USA.

Don’t forget to get yours, I know I will be getting mine.

🙂

Fan Art by Redding

I don’t think anyone was expecting for this Friday update to outshine what we got in the past two updates that were leading up to, and covering PAX East info flood. It comes as no surprise then that we get a Fan Friday Update this week with TorWars.com having the spotlight on them through a Fan Site Q&A session. As Fan Fridays tend to provide, we also get some really cool fan art including the image above from forum user Redding. You can check out new Concept Art and official forum avatars if you read the official article here.

In addition to Fan Friday we get a Studio Insider article describing how cinematic in-game cut-scenes are made. To walk us through the inside work of the process we have Animator Andrew Lauretta. He describes how rough motion captured data is refined and tweaked and then how computer generated actors are added into the scene to give us what Bioware games are best known for – memorable cinematics.

Best for last is the community Q&A on flashpoints. World Designer Jesse Sky answers some of the questions posted in the official forums in the flashpoints Q&A thread. There are several interesting bits about companions and general flashpoint mechanic (and -wow- how Story comes into play). You can post questions about Classes in the new Q&A thread for this month.

Image from Mos Eisley Radio

Penny Arcade Expo in Boston is only several hours away and excitement among The Old Republic fans is mounting. Things are not being made any less difficult by officials at Bioware and they keep adding fuel to fire. We first had an awesome update last Friday with plethora of information on the Bounty Hunter and the Deceived novel. We got surprised on Wednesday by the Guild HQ application on the official swtor.com site (10.000 guilds have registered in these two days). The latest news is that Firday update, that Bioware has been doing for SWTOR every Friday for almost 2 years now, will be done live from the show floor. Official SWTOR Twitter account invited fans to:

… join us at 10:15am EST at Booth 912 and help us kick off #SWTORPAX

The wording of this announcement is very suggestive and the fact they chose #SWTORPAX to be their hash tag feels as if their news is going to be so big that PAX East this year will be remembered by SWTOR news. It might just be the starving fan in me seeing things though.

The other fact is that fans and members of fansites have already started arriving in Boston and there are some images already being available. You can see what the press badge looks like bellow (image from Vall of Tor Syndicate) and the image at the top of this article is actually a look at SWTOR booth that will host the big announcement tomorrow.

Keep your eyes pealed to SWTOR Life all throughout tomorrow and while the event lasts because we will be scouring for news and footage non-stop to bring you as much coverage as we can. Temporarily we added Twitter feeds in our sidebar to keep you updated with the latest news from fansite attendees as well as discussions tagged by the official SWTOR PAX East hashtag #SWTORPAX.

Image courtesy of Tor Syndicate

Despite being a Fan Friday, this Friday update also brought us another Q&A with the developers section. Along with that, the developers have been very active on the forums lately and they have been answering various questions from the fans. Here’s a compilation of the most interesting Q&A from all of these sources.

Q: I would like to see an option to merchant sell all gray loot items in your inventory at once. Going a step further, if there was a way to mark items in your bag as you loot them so that when you sell them off everything that was marked is sold.

A: In TOR, you indeed have the option to command your faithful (or scornful) companion to make a trip to the nearest market to lighten your backpack and fatten your wallet by selling objects of purely monetary value.
Answered by: Georg Zöller, Principal Lead Combat Designer
Source

Q: I really hope they give us access to on-ship storage. Our personal vault should be there rather than some imaginary bank system for items that we access from everywhere in the universe.

A: Your ship’s cargo hold is, indeed, your bank.
Answered by: Damion Schubert, Lead Combat Designer
Source

Q: I hope Bioware has a Beta test just for PvP, I’m worried about balance…

A: Have no doubt, we aim to ensure every Advanced Class has at least one spec that has its place in competitive PvP. The PvP team is already diligently tuning classes based on testing results and will continue to do so as new functions come online. By functions, I mean things like enabling Smugglers in cover to be immune to ‘charge’ and ‘pull’ abilities.
Answered by: Gabe Amatangelo, Lead PvP Designer
Source

Q: Will armor be HP based? wich means you can loose your armor due to wear and tear?

A: Armor takes damage during gameplay, but still offers full benefits until such time that it is completely broken. Armor can be repaired for credits. No, we are not looking at permanently destroying items.
Answered by: Damion Schubert, Lead Combat Designer
Source

Q: In this game, we know the reasons why the Jedi hate the Sith so much. And most of us recognize that the Jedi are a pretty “good” organization. But what hasn’t been talked about a huge amount is why the Sith hate the Jedi. How do the Sith view the Jedi? Why do they think they would make better rulers? Do the Sith actually think that the Sith themselves are “evil”? Do they believe that Force has two sides, a dark side and a light?

A: Sith are evil.

The Sith philosophy is evil and encourages evil in its participants. We can get into endless philosophical discussions about whether anything is actually evil or actually good but if we are speaking from our modern, western view on the concept of evil then the Sith clearly qualify. They are encouraged to put the personal over the group, power over compassion and to judge everything’s worthiness to survive on its ability to fight for that survival. Mercy, sympathy, generosity, these are seen as weaknesses. Anger and rage are seen as strengths. These are not people most of us want to work with or have as neighbors.

That does not mean, however, that the Sith see themselves as evil.
…
In the Star Wars universe, followers of the Sith philosophy genuinely believe that these things we deem evil, are actually in the best interests of a society. They look at the disorder, corruption and infighting of the Republic and they scoff. “What those people lack,” an Imperial thinks, “is strong leadership.”
…
It’s equally important to remember that you don’t have to believe in any of this to play on the Empire’s side in The Old Republic. You can be the exception to the rule. You are merely making a choice to be someone who was born on that side of the fence. Or, in the case of the Bounty Hunter, someone who tends to work in that part of space. The light side Sith who works tirelessly to make his Empire a better place is a deeply compelling character.
Answered by: Daniel Erickson, Master of the Universe
Source
Editor Note: I highly recommend you go and read all of Daniel’s answer because, as always, he was very detailed in his explanation.

You can read the full Q&A from last Friday update by following this link

February 1. was a big date for EA shareholders because that was the day when Electronic Arts Q3 2011 Earnings Conference Call was held and EA CEO John Riccitiello and CFO Eric Brown gave reports on how the past quarter went and what can be expected in the upcoming period. Among other things The Old Republic was discussed. TOR fans were expecting to maybe hear a more precise estimate of the release date in the form of we are expecting a rise in profits in this quearter because TOR gets released that day but none of that happened. The best we got was that TOR will ship in Fiscal 2012, but calendar 2011. Translated this means April 2011. – December 2011. Tell us something we didn’t know, eh? Here is a summary of other TOR related statements:

• EA is incurring significant development costs for the Star Wars MMO
• I will say the following things though, one is we previously described to folks that half a million subscribers or so the game is substantially profitable but its not the kind of thing that we would write home about it, anything north of a million subscribers, it’s a very profitable business.
• The second thing that I would tell you is that the game is looking very good, a number of you will have seen it in a variety of our consumer shows, it’s only gotten stronger, we feel very good about the title. We’re currently testing it with a wide-scale consumer type thing but not sort of at the beta scale level-wise over the coming months.
• Western markets, you know we estimate that the leading competitor has six-ish million subscribers, paying subscribers, and that they’ve got approximately half of the market that seems to be growing in the five percent per annum based on the number of subscribers. So call it 12 million people paying for subscription based gaming in the way that we review as competition. We’ve previously indicated that sort of a million subscribers or more rings our bell, that’s very well for us economically. So it’s our view that we can be very successful without fundamentally challenging the market leader, cause we think we’ll probably hit the smaller competitors harder when we get out there. Of course we have no particular ambition to be a distant number two, our ambitions are higher than that, but we’ve throttled back a little bit relative to our financial projections
• I think what you’re pointing to is it might be getting tired after so many years. I don’t know that to be the case. I have not seen them announce that their western market numbers are coming down. But I do think that the market would be absolutely receptive to something fresh and new and differentiated. If you will, lightsabers vs. swords. I think there’s a marketplace for us here and we’re going at it aggressively

I would also like to reflect on a few things here. First is the best quote of the year “lightsabers vs. swords“. The second thing is something that I did not include in the important list above as it generally is not important, but I find it interesting in “the way industry works” sense. Here’s the quote:

… a fair amount of what you’re asking about is either subject to NDA with our partnership with Lucas …

Lucas Arts obviously has a great deal of control over what information gets released when. Keep that in mind the next time you whine about lack of information and blame it on George! I can’t remember where I read it but someone said that the best thing George Lucas could do to the Star Wars franchise is leave it to the fans and get his greedy paws off of it (opens his flame retardant umbrella and prepares for impending DOOM from fanboys).

You can actually listen to all the most important parts of this conference on the Tor Syndicate site here.

Ask a Jedi had a live blog event about the conference and you can read some of their notes here.

News spotted via Corellian Run Radio – thanks Kathy.