Hello Swtor-Life-ians, today we were graced with the SWTOR Facebook weekly screen Today it is a shot from the planet Voss. Billed as a planet who is described as “The planet Voss is steeped in war between its native species, the Voss and Gormak.” Not really sure whether this is a shot of some sort of monument or of some type of wreckage or left behind device. In any event it looks cool and shows the type of scenery we might come to expect on this planet.
The long awaited Jedi Consular class trailer has finally been made available. The bulky look they gave the Consular in the trailer is really just the way I would like my character to look. I was never a particularly big fan of the Consular (played healer in all other MMOS and I am sick of it, thank you very much), but the visual representation they gave in the video is just awesome. To make the update even better Bioware also released a recap video of SWTOR’s presence at San Diego Comic Con. To see all the new media for the Jedi Consular and learn more about the Shadow and the Sage advanced classes visit the Consular Class page on the official site. You can also find out more about the Consular’s trusted Trandoshan companion, Qyzen Fess. Or you can just watch the trailers bellow.
This video has all the details and it sounds like a real hoot! I can not wait to see what the community comes up with for this. If you remember the recent San Diego Comic Con you may have seen some of the footage of all the awesome cosplay costumes that came out in full force for this event. Hopefully this contest will bring out some of those along with new costumes never before seen.
I knew a couple of guys that were part of a game development team. The game was made by a small team of dedicated enthusiasts and most of them were programmers at heart. It was a strategy game set in space, not unlike Homeworld (if any of you still remember that great game). They slaved at it for 3 years for a small wage hoping to make it big once the game is released. They even got a worldwide publisher, which meant they had a sellable product. When the game came out many tried playing it but found it unnecessarily complex at times and hard even when it didn’t need to be. It had a small following of dedicated fans but it never made it big because it asked too much of players to be widely accepted.
The problem with that game was that the programmers made a game for themselves. There was a lot of math involved and complex systems that would make an analytic mind very happy. The problem is that gamers are not analytic machines. They are gamers of various personalities and mindsets and if you are a game maker you better make sure you are pleasing a larger variety of people than just programmers, unless, of course, you were making the game for three years just to play it yourself.
What brings games closer to gamers is game testing. Involvement of gamers into the game making process introduces another set of minds, other than that of game designers themselves. This brings fresh perspectives and usually changes the game significantly. We saw a glimpse of this process during Q&A sessions at San Diego Comic Con this year. We found out that some systems designed long ago by game designers have been changed based on game testers’ input. There were even some changes so significant (in terms of time needed to develop the system again) that I was rather surprised they decided to do this so late in the game. Click here to read how game testing influenced SWTOR and if it’s a good thing
Today from twitter we see what appears to be a hint from the “Conductor” that SWTOR intends to stay with the traditional pattern of a Tuesday release. From the tweet interaction of Alejandro141614 to Stephen reid of Bioware we get this hint…..
Month of July will be remembered as special because none of the Friday Updates were a Fan Friday (although I think Fan Site spotlights are a great idea and Biware should make sure those continue – they mean a lot to hard working fansite people). It will also be remembered as a month that ended with a 13 minute long, epic gameplay video showcasing the Esseles flashpoint. For those of you that have been following the game for a while, you’ll probably notice that Esseles turns out to be the instance they showed a part of when they first showed group content for The Old Republic.
Watching this video really made me feel like I was watching one of the scenes from the original trilogy, or, worst case, one of the Clone Wars episodes. Felt very Stars Wars-y. Also, once again, they chose the dark side option and actually flushed some people into space – sans space suits. This is one of the videos that definitely deserves your time.
Before I get into this anyone who whines about the CE being too expensive and are from the US “SCREW YOU ALL”.
*Rant Set To Maximum*
You already have one, if not the lowest priced CE additions on earth how dare you. You only pay $150, I’m paying £129, which is around $200. And then I’m a lot better off than those poor Australians who have great trouble just getting the game and after import tax and such are looking at over $300. So, stop it, right now.
According to Cebo in his thread on the official forums for Star Wars the Old Republic MMO, Gamestar Magazine had an exclusive interview with Gabe Amatangelo from Bioware regarding “operations” (Bioware’s term for raiding in it’s MMO) . He talked about different sizes of operations, plus he also revealed that there would be adjustable difficulty levels for you and you group.