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.

Going through all the blog posts and tweets and everything else has left me exhausted. The amount of information given in this last Friday Update is staggering if you think about it, as it is something actual about our classes we are playing at launch. In the bigger picture, if you look at it like I do, it really breaks down class roles, and that leads to the reality of how close we actually are to finally playing this game. With all of this, I am going to try to dissect some of this information in relation to the Bounty Hunter.

Diving straight in, I am going to start with this quote below:

Choosing an Advanced Class is very important in The Old Republic, as within your Advanced Class, your character will reach their full potential. Your Advanced Class choice dramatically alters the gameplay experience of your base class by providing access to two exclusive skill trees per Advanced Class, with a third being shared between both Advanced Classes.

So how I take this is that this plays out like any other MMO so far, even the venerable Warcraft and how their Talent trees used to be when it wasn’t so restricted. This basically say “Hey, pick the AC you want, you still get the base class abilities of the class itself, thus this being the Bounty Hunter. You can even place some points in the other AC. So, just like WOW, we get 3 talent tress to mess with to fine tune the type of player we want to be and how we play.

Now, as much as I hate “cookie-cutter” builds on classes, I don’t see a way Bioware can stop this. Some abilities are going to be better than others and there will be those that will probably force those upon you depending on the role you pick. With this in mind, I hope that Bioware gives us the “Dual Spec” option so that we can have 2 builds based on what we are doing (Soloing/Group).

Something else I picked up on is this:

As you level up, your character will gain abilities from three sources:

• Through trainers, from their base class (e.g. Sith Warrior)
• Through trainers, from their advanced class (e.g. Marauder)
• Through skill points spent in the skill trees of their Advanced Class

So no longer is it the run to one trainer and you’re done. We now have to hit up the Base Class (Bounty Hunter) but we also have to fine the AC trainer that we are playing, in my case which will be the Mercenary. This is interesting as unless these are always grouped up, you have to make sure to remember where each are to make sure all of your abilities are up to par.

Now the fine folks over at Bioware even gave us the break-down on the roles for the Bounty Hunters:

Bounty Hunter Advanced Classes

Mercenary (Roles: Mid – Long Range Damage Dealing, Healing)

PowerTech (Roles: Close – Mid Range Damage Dealing, Tanking)

• As previously announced, the Bounty Hunter’s Mercenary Advanced Class now features the ‘Bodyguard’ skill tree, allowing this iconic class to fill the role of a medic if desired.
• The ‘Advanced Prototype’ skill tree, shared between both Bounty Hunter ACs, now features an upgrade to the base class flamethrower, which allows the player to rotate while using the ability.

We now see how the Bounty Hunter breaks down. Mercenary breaks down into a DPS/Healer role and the Powertech breaks down into a DPS/Tank role. Now for all you WOW’ers out there, Bounty Hunters look to have the possibility of being Paladins of Swtor.

Those that are going the Tank Bounty Hunter will also have that DPS chance of speeding up their leveling without sacrificing the Tank aspect of it. It also plays

I, like many, think this last update was a great one. it really moves use one step closer to that fateful date where we all get to jump in game and put all this information we have been hoarding for so long to the test. In regards to the Bounty Hunter, playing a main healer and knowing I have DPS choices to help in the leveling process make me very happy as well.

Georg Zoller made, what is probably, the funniest post on the official forums in weeks (or evah!). It was a response to one of the people that commented something about Stephen Reid cutting the swimming feature out of the HERO engine while Bioware modified it for SWTOR. I don’t know if the person that made this “accusation” ever again appeared on the forum, since I can’t think of a comback to this post.

Let me fill you in on a secret.

Stephen, in his function as Community Manager, prints the source code of the game engine we are using onto giant paper sheets. Daily. He then proceeds to personally use a pair of oversized, green scissors to cut out vital parts of it. We then scan the results, run them through optical character recognition, synthesize the output into wave files and feed them to the lip synching program that outputs the result using a mockup of Admiral Ackbar placed in an empty test level.

Our valiant IT department has set up a webcam pointed onto a giant 50′ monitor, focused on Admiral Ackbars lips. The image from the webcam is translated to a programmer equally skilled in COBOL and lip reading, who inputs the resulting source code directly from the screen into the source code repository, where it is stored on magnetic cards that are swiped by several dozen interns and flown via pigeon to London, UK, to deliver the latest and greatest demo to the showfloor.

This estemeed gentlemen and ladies, is how games are made.

(In other words – Stephen didn’t cut anything, and decisions on swimming were made long before he even arrived in the building.)

I fall firmly into the category of players who were greatly intrigued by Friday’s Dev. Update, as much for what it didn’t say for what it did.  We learned that the Sith Inquisitor will have an Advanced Class that will be fully capable of Tanking, for example, which came as a pleasant surprise to many (myself included).

At this stage, the tanking rogue has now been done before, breaking from the “Tanks must wear plate” paradigm, so the Assassin tank will not necessarily be groundbreaking.  We know that the Sith Inquisitor wears light armor also, which has led to a number of speculations.  Will the Assassin be a completely avoidance-based tank, utilizing high Dodge and/or Parry rates to minimize incoming damage (rather than mitigating it outright through high armor rates)?  I  initially also thought of the Swordmaster class from Warhammer Online, which also fulfilled the tanking role without the usage of a shield.  It was from looking at the Inquisitor’s mirror class, the Jedi Consular, that the picture became somewhat less fuzzy.

Take a look at a screen grab of this talent, called Kinetic Ward, which I believe sheds some light onto how this mechanic may function:

As a mirror class, I’d say it’s probably safe to assume that the Assassin will be using something similar.  This fits in with the description of the Consular (specifically, the Jedi Shadow) using “Lightsaber defense and Force powers.”

And as an aside, we knew that the Inquisitor/Consular were going to have access to some degree of Stealth, but take a look at the last line in this tooltip.  I hadn’t anticipated the playstyle of “Stealth Tank” but that is exactly what it seems to suggest.  We can probably also count on seeing the Imperial Agent and Smuggler healers making use of Stealth in some way as well.  That has the potential to be a really interesting mechanic – I’m most curious to see how it plays out in PvP though.

So as it stands, while SWTOR may not be rewriting the rules of the Holy Trinity, they are at the very least, providing these tools to a number of different classes.  It remains to be seen whether or not the developers will give in and allow Advance Class respecs or not.  While this may not be the most popular stance to take, I’m actually kind of hoping that they don’t.  I can imagine this feature being a popular “Paid Service” feature if they ever offered it.

All in all, I can safely say that I am completely stoked to play this beast!

Should I Tank, Or Should I Heal ?

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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.

So last week I delved into the General Forum and brought you a glimpse into the Appearance tab discussion. This week I am doing something a little different and bringing you not just one forum post but eight. That’s right, and I do this because I think these posts are generally over looked by the masses and they shouldn’t be because their owners and everyone that has participated has put a wealth of gathered information for all to browse and learn from. This week I bring you the Class FAQ posts from every class on the Character Classes Forum.

First you want to start out with the Compendium of knowledge for everything known character wise that has been gathered and set before you like a bountiful feast for your brain. The The Classes Checklist: Confirmed NFO post by chillinvillain is an amazing job at keeping a lot of information in one single place. I think it is generally over-looked as people rush head long into their classes they want to know more about. I would say that this thread should be the first stop for all players that want to get some good over all information.

So without further ado, lets jump into what I think are the best of the best in regards to classes and get started with the best around, the Non-Force User classes in the game.

Are you are in the mood to walk the walk and talk the talk? Do you like solo moonlit strolls along the beach before you knock some ones head in for a reward? How about being cold, maybe say cold as carbonite? Then I think you are just like me and know that the Bounty Hunter is the class for you. Before you begin your journey though, you might want to know more about what you have to look forward to, so go read up. Fembo has been doing a great job on the post and I thank them for it. (Yes I am kind of biased and Bounty Hunters get to go first, but it’s my post so keep reading or I’ll put a mark on your head)

Do you like to hide in the shadows and work unseen? Like hiding behind things and taking your prey by surprise? Rather take them in dead than alive? Have some weird fetish for sharp pointy objects? Well then, you’re probably an Imperial Agent out on a mission or watched BladeRunner way too many times. Anyways, check out the FAQ on IA’s by  TheShadowedTruth. This will get you started on your new life, just stay away from airlocks.

Like the military? Got a thing for guns and then some guns and maybe even some guns for guns on the side? Yeah I thought so. You want to feel like a walking can of sardines do you? Got a thing for the Tin Man over Dorothy and prefer hand grenades to apples. Trooper, through and through aren’t ya?  Well listen up soldier! leviatha has some news for you over here. Pop to it and get educated and then get ready to report for duty! While you are waiting to get started, go see if you can land a shot on this.

You are not Han Solo. You are not Han Solo. You are not Han Solo. You are not Han Solo. You are not Han Solo. You are not Han Solo. Got it? No? Okay so if you want to be the Lego-las of Swtor then go right ahead. Hoviator has something that might interest you posted here and maybe if you are good, we might be okay with you thinking that you are Solo…but you won’t be.

So now we get to the Force Users. You know them, they are the Ravers with Glow-sticks.

Like Dark Robes? Have nothing but hate and anger rolling around that brain of yours? Get the urge to go all Johnny “Johnny B” Bukowski on some Republic heads when you feel all good inside? Well hello Mr Sith Inquisitor! You’re not the Emperor yet and probably never will be, but you keep trying to achieve the impossible. Pangscar has the Sith Inquisitor 2.0 post going and this should help you on that way to ultimate power.

Darth Malgus is the current flavor in game. Darth Vader is probably the one you old geezers relate to more. Either way, Sith Warriors are bad news to anyone, even themselves. Jxspyder has all the information you want on this particular class posted for you to read.

Hey Farm Boy! Get those two droids and go milk some cows or swamprats or something. Yes, nothing too witty to say about the beloved Jedi Knight. So ncupton will fill you in  on all the details and maybe you won’t be some lowly Padawan anymore. Never know, you could end up saving everyone of us!

I got nothing for the Jedi Consular. Seriously! Because as soon as you pop out your lightsaber staff all I will see is something we have all seen before. I’ll laugh at you. Everyone will laugh at you. So while we are indisposed rolling in joyous rapture at your class choice misfortune, Drudenfusz has some information on this post, that may make it possible for you to seem like a good class choice, but we will still snicker at you.

So there you go, Class information on all the classes currently being brought to you in Swtor.

Forum Friday is a weekly posting regarding the posts from the Official Swtor Forums. If you find a post you find interesting and would like to see it discussed here, then Contact Swtor Life with your idea.

Don’t you love Fridays? Not only is it the last day of the week for work, for most of us, it is also the day we look forward to for updates from Swtor. Now, I love those updates and can’t wait until I see it every week, but don’t they leave you itchy?

By itchy I mean wanting to just be able to get in the game and finally play. It does me, and makes anything else mundane compared to the desire I have for the game. It doesn’t get better either. Not when you have fan sites, such as Swtor Life, that do their best to keep that itch going and even spread it around more.

Darth Hater is such a fan site, with all their updates to news and updates on updates. They are probably the best at really dissecting information as it comes out and if you want to see how, you really should check out some of their galleries. If you have an itch after getting the Friday update and then check out DH and let that itch becomes a rash!

Mos Eisley Radio is another fan site that does nothing to cure that itch. Their pod-casts are really great at showing how fans of the game are getting into the game their own way. They interview people and Developers to get more information for people to watch and listen too. They discuss the things and ideas we are all having about the game. Even though Brooks has left for a job with Bioware, and we hates him we does Precious, I am sure MER is still going to be the place to turn our itch, now rash, pretty infectious.

Still not enough to sate that appetite for the game and every ounce of information you can gather or go over since none of us are actually playing the game? Good, it isn’t for me either. Fortunately for us, there is TORSyndicate. They bring us stuff from other fan sites, all over the web, in one easy location. Everyone has a voice about the game and this play gives us a speaker-phone to make those voices heard a little bit easier. Still scratching? Good.

So if those Friday Updates make you itch to play and that itch has gone bubonic by now, join the club. There are even more places on the web that you can check out for fans talking about the game and their hopes they have for it. It’s alright, you aren’t alone, scratch away.

I’m so glad the SWTORGB event went ahead, and we got some tips of information from it, for I was kind of stumped on this weeks article.

The announcement that Darth and Lord Titles, would indeed be used in-game got me thinking about, well, mini games and other titles that could be available.

Of course, these titles are down to the individual players to choose, Darth Chocolate and Lord Of-The-Dance, would turn most of us into a crazy nerd rage, and rightly so. But lets think about the non player generated titles that  may be available.

First and foremost, in-game titles can come from a number of events as you play through the game.

For instance, killing 200 Womp rats may give you the option of using a “Womp Rat Slayer” Title.  Ok, this may not be the greatest title to have, but it’s a start at least. Killing X amount of mobs as well as players is one of the most common in-game title achievements, that MMO’s have used over the years. Continue Reading »