Ok, first let me start by saying like many other followers I’m stocked that we have a release date at long last.
But could SWTOR have picked a more awkward date to release a MMO ?
Also the way it was announced was very strange indeed, with no sign that the formidable train was entering the station.
Have you just about dried up and blown away from the lack of information released on crew skills in Star Wars the Old Republic MMO?
I feel your pain and that is why I come to you today to preach the word and let you know to have faith, information is coming!
Monday the 19th TORWARS one of my favorite fansites focusing around SWTOR released an interview they had with my hero on the SWTOR developer team, Lead System Designer Damion Schubert.
In this interview Damion had some nice nuggets of information for us such as this when asked about what system he can’t wait to see players mess with,
Tonight via the @SWTOR account on twitter I was made aware that Bioware is advertising a sneak peek at the Friday update, a Developer Dispatch having to do with companions.
It is a great one in my opinion, over seven minutes of some of the developers talking about companions and the mechanics revolving around them. Such people as James Ohlen, Daniel Erickson, Georg Zhoeller, and more make this one of my favorite dev dispatches to date.
It is an interview done by Gamespot, very well done and full of information indeed. It talks about customization options, companions with levels and the ability to level them, and many more goodies. If you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend going to see it or you could just wait till tomorrow……..
I thought not, well, here it is. 😉
Today on the subject of phase 2 for guilds we got an announcement that the phase 2 for guilds is starting today.
Back in March we initiated our Pre-Launch Guild Program, where members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community could search for already established guilds or register one of their very own through the Guild Headquarters page. We are thrilled to announce that we have begun the second phase of our Pre-Launch Guild Program!
With Phase 2: Alignment, we are introducing new features which allow guilds to set their allegiance with other guilds in The Old Republic. Now a guild leader, along with members who have the proper permissions, can select up to three guilds as either Allies or Adversaries, depending on their faction affiliation. Qualifying guilds that are marked as Allies and Adversaries of other guilds will have the highest chance of being placed in the game together, allowing these guilds to coexist on the same server.
Another feature being implemented with Phase 2 is the ability for guild leaders and members with the proper permissions to invite friends to join their guild via email. You can start recruiting new members today!
To learn more about guilds in The Old Republic, check out the Guilds Game System page for details, and to search for or join a guild, visit the Guild HQ now! Also be sure to visit the Guilds FAQ for answers to commonly asked questions.
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Today in the land of yellow posts came a very important statement from Stephen Reid about the potential for scams in gaining beta testing access to SWTOR, and the truth behind it. I want to highlight this bit of information because I want to make sure all the community is aware of the possible risk involved with such a scam.
Today via Stephen Reid on the official forums and twitter we got an announcement from Bioware that they decided to re-invite the testers of the first and only (so far) September beta testing weekend. Here Stephen gives us a great explanation to the reasoning and the situation behind the change of not inviting weekend testers back for another go.
Today via a tweet on twitter from @Rockjaw (Stephen Reid) we were pointed to a official statement on the dev tracker regarding the inclusion of same gender romance arcs with your companions. The statement reads as follows,
Due to the design constraints of a fully voiced MMO of this scale and size, many choices had to be made as to the launch and post-launch feature set. Same gender romances with companion characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic will be a post-launch feature. Because The Old Republic is an MMO, the game will live on through content expansions which allow us to include content and features that could not be included at launch, including the addition of more companion characters who will have additional romance options.
The guys at tgnSWTOR on YouTube have made this awesome guide to starships in SWTOR. It is definitely worth a view as it is a great piece of work. Stop on by their channel and give them some love and tell them thanks for all their awesome work.
Do you, like me, have questions surrounding the “weekend beta testing” or just “testing” in general? Well you are in luck today folks because hot off the transmitter waves we got this information from Stephen Reid;
Plus we now have an additional update from @Rockjaw on this info as well!
Read On——->
Today on the official forums we got this update from Chris Collins,
As promised, we have an update on the batch of Game Testing invites being sent to players in the EU.
After a lengthy discussion here at the BioWare offices, the decision has been made to postpone the proposed Game Testing invites for EU players for a number of reasons.
Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.
Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.
For those of you that may have missed the messages we put out on the subject already, last week saw a number of issues arise with key systems that prevented us from sending out invites to EU players. Had everything gone to plan, we would have been able to offer two weeks of testing time to new users. However, given the issues that arose, this was physically not possible.
So while we understand that this news may not be what a lot of you wanted to hear today, we hope that you’ll understand our position. Given the news of this new build, it’s now more important than ever that we invite European players into the Game Testing environments, so you have my word that this batch of invites will happen, it may just mean you just have to wait a little longer.
It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.
As ever, as soon as I get any firm news around the matter, I’ll make sure to update everyone.
