In light of the most recent news coming from Electronic Arts, Bioware and Star Wars: The Old Republic camps I have come to the conclusion that it is time to change the direction and the intensity of my involvement in the SWTOR community and my support for the companies that made this game.

We will stop posting up-to-date news about the game on SWTOR Life. I would like to thank Joshrooms for working diligently these past months to bring you all that news goodness and I thank all who visited us because of that. We will also steer away from trying to be a column driven fansite or any kind of serious fansite for that matter. I intend to turn this into a personal SWTOR related blog where I’ll share a blog post or two when inspiration hits me and I hope I’ll make a few webcomics that have been floating in my mind for a long time now and that I never was able to do because there were “more important” things to be done. I am telling you all this so you are not surprised with all the incoming changes on the site.

We are now back to where we were in June 2009. when the site first started. This is again my very own, personal pet project, just as it was back then. In the past two years we tried to make SWTOR Life one of the most prominent TOR fansites on the internet. Considering the funding we had ($0) I am very proud with what was accomplished. This is all thanks to a lot of great people that joined and left SWTOR Life over the years. Thanks to SWTORCrafter, Mr. Warlock, Flagg, BorukBH, Dalqak, Rosie, Daelda, MJ and Josh we were able to bring the SWTOR community interviews with the developers, reporting from events, amazing weekly columns and tongue in cheek articles consistently over a long period of time. I had nothing to do with this – it is all accomplishment of the people I just mentioned and therefore I am in their debt forever (and I think the SWTOR community a bit as well).

Sadly, in light of all the things happening with the game and the fact that none of the above people are with SWTOR Life anymore (my fault mainly) I had to make a decision and scale down SWTOR Life considerably. From now on it will be a “if I feel like it” thing. I have overextended myself working on SWTOR Life and SWTOR Spy for a very long time and that has to stop yesterday.

I want to make one thing very clear though (in before the trolls). I believe that Star Wars: The Old Republic is a great game that has a lot to offer to any true gamer. There are so many things done very well that it is a shame if you do not attempt to experience at least a part of it. Personally, I will be enjoying the game for what I hope will be a long time to come. I believe with all my hearth that the Bioware, Austin crew stood by their product to the best of their abilities and tried providing us with the best game possible. I hope they will be able to get out of this hole and break the chains that bound them. Even if that does not happen I am proud and happy to have been a part of this amazing journey that waiting for and launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic has been.

  
Weird sequence of events led me to have my main SWTOR character on a PvE server called Dune Bantha. I initially started playing Republic with my wife on a server some of my SWTOR Life buddies played on, but my wife soon quit due to annoyances in the game she couldn’t pass over and I needed an Empire character to discover some things for our SWTOR Spy Database. That is how Zarmelesh, a demented Twi’lek Sith Assassin came to life – a female character with a randomly assigned name and no ambition whatsoever.
  
Dune Bantha was chosen because it had low population at the time and I didn’t want to wait for queues nor did I want to have my game investigations hampered by random PvP (so PvE server was chosen). I was power leveling my assassin, with exception of class quests which had such great cutscenes and story that I just couldn’t speed past those. Two unexpected things happened. I started loving my demented assassin and some of its companions (Khem FTW). I also started playing loads of PvP warzones. So much that I mostly level through PvP from level 30 to level 49. I was rank 49 in PvP and I had to level to 50 to be able to get to PvP rank 50 – meaning – my PvP rank leveling curve was ahead of my actual experience leveling curve.
  
The consequence of so much PvP was that I’ve started seeing the same faces in PvP and getting familiar with their play styles. We soon started sending each other /wave-s and /hug-s as on Imperial Fleet hallways. The thing about pre-50 PvP is that there are a lot of people that play it just a few times and those that play it all the time. Soon we had a team of regulars that you knew the tactics and were tough to play against. By that time though there was already a big decline in active players and we started seeing less and less PvP matches pop. Nevertheless, I remember this one Sith Warrior called Narfle – he was my PvP God at the time. He was unbeatable and I always wondered how did he manage to survive everything, score regularly and be first on the score board. Cheers Narfle – it was always a pleasure losing to you ;).
  
Reaching level 50 changed the game for me because PvP suddenly became a different game. There were people with PvP gear and knowledge of tactics. Very few noobs existed or were so humiliated that they either practiced to become better or left never to return to PvP. Server population became even smaller and we had perhaps 40-50 players both republic and imperial side that regularly played PvP. I started seeing always the same faces. It was a lot of fun because we all played PvP for hours with the same people and we really bonded – may it be through rivalry or camaraderie – but we kind of bonded. I always knew that if I played with fat and bald bounty hunter Egg or sorcerer Zyntharia or Sith Warrior Morgoth in the group I would win because they were so good at what they did. There were republic players that we knew we would lose against because they were so good (Syth , Kitven, Gilgamesh, Valery, thejedi, Emi (which is Zyntharia’s rep character)). I started learning from these greats and started getting some better PvP gear and sooner rather than later I was getting to be one of the veterans as well. I specced into tanking PvP build and started showing up in the top of the score board more often than not. Tanking build also made it possible to do PvE.
  
PvE was not so good for a very long time. The first three months I barely ever found a group for a HM flashpoint. The server was low pop as it is and people started leaving very soon, which made things even more difficult. I was in a zerg guild that had 15 members online out of 500 all the time (and none of them were level 50). In a surprising turn of events I got an invite one night form a Danish guild. They needed an off-tank to help them in their EV raid. I was ecstatic. I think some of their members knew me from PvP or I was the only tank online. Whatever the case I was soon experiencing my first raid content in SWTOR and not just watched it on livestreams. Things went really well and I even got some gear. Thanks to the Danish Invasion I had my first SOA kill and raiding PvE experience in SWTOR 3+ months after the game launched. We raided several more times in the next month and it is the most fun I had in SWTOR beside some great PvP matches. I would like to take this opportunity to thank P’nes, Aeonkazza, Rion, Rambo, Glikus, Greken, Taball and the rest of the gang for taking me in and putting up with my complete lack of knowledge of Danish language and lack of any tanking skills. You guys made SWTOR a memorable experience.
  
For a few weeks now it has been very hard to get a raid going. Some people got fed up with Bioware’s inability to react to problems. Others left as soon as Diablo 3 launched. Some still persist and try and get a raid going every now and then with the help of two other crippled guilds. It is still fun hanging out with these guys and playing together, but the occasions have become seldom. Zyntharia is still kicking ass in PvP. I enjoy it whenever it happens. Unfortunately it can be hours now before a match pops. Besides, there are so few of us playing now that as soon as one side loses they never reapply for PvP and we go into a waiting mode for an hour.
  
I wanted to tell you my story of the server Dune Bantha and the people I enjoyed playing this game with. I wasn’t planning on it. I always thought I would be a raiding and healing smuggler on the Juyo server. Instead, I became a demented PvP Assassin in a Danish guild. Now that many have left I feel that I need to put this story in writing. I want all of you that stumbled upon this blog entry to know that from January to April 2012 there was this game Star Wars: The Old Republic that we all thought is awesome and that there was this server Dune Bantha on which I found people that gave me hours and days of gaming heaven.
  
P.S. I would like to thank and mention the following players I kept playing with/against in PvP that made me come back to warzones day after day: Drix, Diogo, Valarius, Reddas, Jaqen, Dose, Drix, Tasia (I still hate you 😛 ), Treyus, Bleach, Firezone, Calvin Hobbes, Rbk

What was only a rumor yesterday was confirmed today, Stephen Reid was one of those affected by the layoffs at BioWare. He confirmed this morning via Twitter and Facebook that he was let go from the company, a sad state of affairs for anyone who looked to him as one of their primary sources for SWTOR info. Here is the rundown straight from the man himself, via his Twitter account-

Today my life’s next chapter starts. Lost track of how many chapters so far… but time to turn the page.

I was one of those affected by layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. I got to build an amazing team while I was there, and miss them already.

I’m also going to miss #SWTOR and the community we created. Sure, I know some of you hated me, but hey, I still worked hard for you.

I’ll be Twitter-quiet for a bit, but I’ll be back soon-ish. Doing something, somewhere, and talking about it here. I hope we keep talking.

Last but not least: I was quiet for the last couple of weeks because I was full-on devoted to #SWTOR character transfer. It’s still coming!

Now I’ve got to go, because you don’t want to see a grown man cry on Twitter. Also, I don’t know the emoticon for it.

Don’t lose faith. They’re still devoted to making a great game.

It’s a wide-open space right now. Big, full of possibilities, and scary as hell. Thanks for everything guys.

Good luck with whatever you have planned in the future Stephen, and May the Force be with you.

  
Based on today’s news about layoffs in the SWTOR team, an article I read about what it was like for Mythic employees after Warhammer launched and Patrick meme.
  

I had an enormous privilege to walk the halls of Bioware, Austin development studio in its best days. All the razzle dazzle aside (so much cool stuff could be seen) there was one thing that made me feel certain we are going to have an amazing game on our hands. It was all the hard working people there producing diligently worlds of Star Wars: The Old Republic. We were walking by one of the rooms and there were world designers placing various objects onto one of the planets right at the moment we were passing by. I thought to myself – my character will be running around there in no time.

Yesterday, we learned that a lot of the people have been hit by a wave of layoffs (Click to read the announcement by Bioware foudners). On behalf of SWTOR Life and its staff I wanted to extend my best wishes to all those affected. Thank you for all your hard work and trying to give us fans the best game possible.

Sad news from BioWare today as the leaders of BioWare, Greg and Ray, announced that some members of the SWTOR team have been laid off.

Details are still sketchy, there is no word on who has been let go or how many, but it is truly sad to see the departure of people who have worked so hard on the game. Fans and critics of the game are already putting their own spin on what this means for SWTOR’s future, but both Greg and Ray have stated that the team at BioWare is still strong and will continue to put out new content for the game for a long time and that the game will still be growing for years to come.

Below you will find the full post directly from BioWare. What do you think of this new development? Let us know in the comments below. Continue Reading »

IGN.com gave us one of our first looks at what players can expect out of game update 1.3, also known as the “Allies” update. The major features of this update are a group finder, augment tables, new legacy perks, and the big daddy of the update; server transfers. Details about the update come in the form of a video by James Ohlen, as well as a nice interview with Daniel Erickson.

In addition to the video you can find the full interview with Daniel Erickson here.

What are you most excited for in 1.3? Let us know in the comments below!

BioWare has announced that we will not have to sit through a maintenance period this Tuesday. That’s right, feel free to play to your hearts content all week long! Here is the official message from the forums:

Greetings everyone! The patch notes for this week’s server maintenance are now live, and it is quite a long list this time around. You can read all of the notes from this week after the jump. Continue Reading »

Greetings all, it’s time for another edition of the Community Q&A. This week the developers talk about the story decisions behind one of the Sith Warrior companions (you have to be logged in to see due to spoilers), discuss character mergers in respect to the Legacy System, and touch on a few crafting questions. You can find all the questions and answers from this week after the jump. Due to the spoilers associated with the Sith Warrior question it will be omitted, but you can find the question and answer over at this week’s Community Q&A post. Continue Reading »