Datacrons, Holocrons, Noetikons, it seems like The Old Republic is full of just about every variation of the ‘cron there is. Datacrons in particular have become some of the most sought after items in the game with the permanent stat boosts they hand out to those lucky enough to track them down.  Today we are going to take a look at what the technological marvels do, how they work, and where they came from. Continue Reading »

Tags: Datacrons, holocron, jedi, Noetikron, Rakata, sith

That’s right, even after being updated in Tuesday’s patch there are more changes on the horizon for the global cooldown animation.

Ever since the cooldown animation was updated in 1.1.2 their has been a growing group of players who have been disappointed with the change. The white flash of the abilities as they enter the cooldown state has been visually unappealing to players, with some even reporting that the animation makes then nauseous and causes headaches. There have also been complaints that since using any ability causes all of your abilities to go grey it makes it difficult for classes that spam abilities every second (such as the Sentinel or Marauder) to know if their abilities are ready, if they are in the correct range, or even if they have enough resources to activate their abilities.

BioWare opened a poll earlier today to try and get a feel for what percentage of players were disappointed with the changes. By the time the poll was closed over 57% of players who responded voted that the thought the new animations were terrible. BioWare assured players that changes would be coming based on the feedback that they received, and elaborated that they would not have implemented these changes in the first place had they received this kind of feedback out it on the Public Test Server.

Getting players to participate on the Public Test Server has been somewhat of a challenge for BioWare, as most players do not want to roll and level a brand new character for the sole purpose of testing new content. In order to help alleviate this problem BioWare announced that they are working on changes that will allow players to freely transfer their characters to the Public Test Server in order to help test new content. No official word on when these changes will be coming, but we will be keeping an eye on the forums and will update you with a date once it is announced.

Tags: 1.1.2, Character Transfer, community poll, global cooldown, PTS, ui

When Tuesday’s patch was downloaded some players quickly discovered that their PvP kills on Ilum were not counting towards their daily or weekly mission totals, and at times were not receiving the valor they should have for making a kill. Associate Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez posted earlier today that they will be rolling out an emergency patch in order to fix these issues. Starting at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) BioWare will be bringing all servers down in order to fix these problems, and hope to have the servers back up and running by 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET).

Hopefully we will all be back to earning our promised rewards for our actions on Ilum soon.

Tags: 1.1.2, emergency patch, Ilum, PvP, Valor

This week’s patch notes are up and ready to be seen by the general public. The usual class ability tweeks and improvements to Operations and Flashpoints are present. But one note in general should have players jumping for joy.

If Sprint was active when a player died, it now remains active when the player is revived.

This may seem like a small thing but it is a great relief that players will no longer have to reactivate the Sprint ability after dying, especially in PvP warzones. You can read the full patch notes here.

Tags: 1.1.2, patch notes

It’s that time of the week again, maintenance time. Servers will be going down tonight starting at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) and are scheduled to remain down until 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET).

As always the servers could come back online before the four hours are up, or they could stay down longer if need be. We shall keep you posted if the times change for any reason.

Tags: server maintenance, servers, weekly maintenance

Prologue / Act 1: Scene 1  / Act 1: Scene 2

The planet Alderaan has been known throughout the galaxy as a place for knowledge, freedom, unity and the goal of peace. Many feel that if Coruscant is the heart of the Republic then Alderaan is the soul. The treaty of Coruscant disrupted that relationship and Alderaan withdrew from the Republic and became focused on the civil war among the noble houses.

The beauty and peace of Alderaan is now scarred with the blood and smoke of war. The once peaceful and smooth political process has degenerated into treachery and war. Added into all of this confusion, the Empire has backed an old forgotten noble house, Thul, and the Republic has been providing backing for another well known and old noble house: Organa. Continue Reading »

Tags: Alderaan, Empire, Imperial, open world pvp, player versus player, PvP, Republic, Rosie

BioWare announced this weekend that they will be adding a few new features to SWTOR.com. The first being a series of videos entitled “Begin Your Journey’ which are designed to help new players learn the basics of Star Wars: The Old Republic. They also announced that they will be starting two new weekly blogs dsigned to give players an insight into the development process.

You can watch the new video and learn more after the jump. Continue Reading »

Tags: blog, dev tracker, player guides, video

((The RP XP with MJ #24))

The Zabrak Padawan lay cradling his dead master as the two Sith approached, their crimson blades vibrating the air as he looked helplessly up at them.

Tarik knew this was it. He had always wondered how his end would come and actually hoped it would be in combat against Sith side-by-side with his master. Of course Tarik never saw the Sith slowly stalking him after slaying his master from a distance in any of his wishful visions, not giving either of them a chance to defend themselves.

“Get it over with!” He yelled at them, his eyes welling with tears though he tried to suppress his emotions.

Most of them.

The Rattataki girl spoke first after giving her saber a threatening twirl. “He seems angry, my lord. Perhaps we can turn him.”

Darth Tagious never took his yellow eyes off the Padawan. He merely said, “He’s yours, Veetha. Play with him awhile. I will meet you at the Works.”

“Of course, my master,” Veetha’s smile was as sly as a vine cat’s.

Continue Reading »

Tags: roleplayers, roleplaying, RP, RP XP with MJ

The Rattataki are pretty easy to recognize with their pale skin and bald heads that pretty much scream “I’m one of the bad guys!” They are relatively unknown in the greater galaxy, and there is little information on them as a species. The most well-known member of the Star Wars universe that was believed to be Rattataki, Asajj Ventress, has recently been confirmed to not be a Rattataki at all (despite the fact that she looks exactly like a Rattataki and was found on the Rattataki home world). Today I will share what little we do know about Rattataki so that we may all learn a little more about this mysterious species. Continue Reading »

Tags: Dark Coucil, lore, Rattataki, sith

BioWare recently released patch notes for update 1.1.2, which is currently live on the Public Test Server. It includes the usual plethora of ability, mission, and companion fixes as well as some tweeks to the Biochem skill.

Biochem users will now be able to give/sell Energized and Exotech stims and adrenals to other players as they are no longer bound to the user nor do they require skill in Biochem to use. There seem to be two big reasons why this change was made. First of all it removes the pressure on players to take Biochem in order to optimize their performance, particularly at endgame. Second it opens up more options for Biochem players to make credits by selling these stims and adrenals on the Global Trade Network. Biochem also will be getting another nerf as the effectiveness of Biochem exclusive Rakata stimpacks have been reduced to be equal to Energized stimpacks. In fact Bioware announced that they intend to reduce, over a series of patches, the effectiveness of situational consumables on endgame combat resolution. The end goal being to make the outcome of endgame combat be based more on player skill and less on what items they have on hand.

BioChem is just the first of the crafting skills to see tweaks in order to make all the skills more applicable to end game content. Major changes are currently on schedule for the next major content patch, such as extractable basemods (armoring, barrel, etc.) from purple items, critical crafting successes on orange outfits, more bind-on-equip schematic drops for artifice and other professions, increased relevance of augments, better reverse engineering chance, and other improvements.  PvP is also going to see some changes in the future, with the power difference granted by PvP gear being reduced to make it easier for new level 50 players to compete in PvP.

You can read the developer post about the crafting changes here, and the full 1.1.2 patch notes after the jump. Continue Reading »

Tags: Biochem, crafting, endgame, patch notes, public test server, PvP