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.
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After the flood of info from San Diego Comic Con came in I decided to have some fun with it and ponder just what was my top ten info releases for me personally. I start with number ten and work my way to the one I felt to be personally the coolest. I wonder if your interests are similar to mine, or if you have even seen all this stuff yet?
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Darth Malgus Statue at Bioware Base
I wanted to give you an overview of news that have come out of this year’s San Diego Comic Con and SWTOR’s presence at the event. As all of you probably know Bioware held a panel dedicated to The Old Republic on the first day of ComicCon and there is also a Bioware Base setup in a hotel near by the convention center where many fans are able to get their hands on the game and experience other games Bioware has to offer. I would like to suggest that you closely monitor www.torwars.com and www.darthhater.com because they are the only fansites reporting live from the event and they have the most up-to-date news available. Here’s a summary of things we’ve learned so far.
July 21st – midnight PDT – Pre-Order launch
Official SWTOR site had a pre-order page made available with all the details on how to obtain a copy of digital standard or collector’s editions of the game or standard and CE boxed version. A number of well known MMORPG sites have had an advertising campaign for the pre-orders launched at the same time.
July 21st – San Diego Comic Con Bioware and LucasArts panel
- For the first time the opening crawl for one of the classes (Sith Warrior) was shown to the general public. (absolutely epic – watch in Part 1 video from TorWars here)
- No duplicate missions in class stories
- Jedi consular companion Nadia revealed for the first time (she is romancable)
- Higher level vehicles shown looking much better than segways
- There will be 19 major worlds (that means we should expect two more planets revealed?)
- You can customize companion characters, from clothing, weapons, and even their skin color, hair color and facial features
- They are testing adding tactics options to companions (like the AI system seen in Dragon Age)
- 900 voice actors have been working on the game across all languages
- There will be bonuses for people that reroll that they will talk about later (it is assumed that this is the rumored Legacy system and that you will get additional customization and race options if you have a level 50 character and roll a new character)
- Hyperspace travel between planets will take seconds (there was an idea it should take minutes, but dismissed after testing)
- It would take ~30 minutes to run across Tatooine
- Beta testing weekends start September and “huge” numbers of people will be able to join
- Stephen Reid put his Conductor’s hat on and said the following
- Release date window is now moved from second half of 2011 to Holiday 2011
- All participants of the panel got pre-order codes that will give them early access. They will still have to purchase the game tho.
General things learned from Q&A sessions and interviews
- By all accounts you will be able to respec your advanced class at some point in the game. First respec will be “easy”, but after that it will be very difficult to respec advanced class
- The boxed collector edition owners will have access to a VIP area that will hold the special CE vendor that will sell items for in-game credits. These items will have different looks than similarly powered items you can get in the game as drops or rewards.
- pre-order Color Stone should be yellow colored (yellow core with a blck glow?)
- shards (instanced versions of a certain area where two people would be standing in the same place yet be on a different “shard”) is available as a technology and they will reluctantly use it if they need to help initial launch.
- Swtor works very well on MACs with bootcamp
- Companioncan not die anymore, unlike what we heard before. “…don’t want players to lose companions and have them gone forever.
This compilation of information was done thanks to articles and live blogs by Newsarama and TorWars.
From the interview that me and Serge had with Damion Schubert and the Developer Q&A we attended with him, I got wind of something that has my ears perked for sure. The mention or hinting at a new mechanic on the horizon for crew skills in SWTOR.
I was hit by the realization of what I think I understand them to be planning immediately. In the Q&A with Damion Schubert when the first question of the session was asked to him, he replied with a response that included this little gem about a mystery “research system”
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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.
Something I have been wondering about for quite some time is the level of item one can expect to craft after a “crafting crit” takes place during item creation. Will the created item be on par with raid loot drops, PVP drops, or other drops or rewards from missions?
Read on!
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My question to you today is:
Based on your normal play style how do you see yourself acquiring the materials you need to craft in SWTOR?
Will you use the auction house mechanic relying on other players to provide the auctions for you to buy, or will you rely on yourself and your companions to gather what you need via the gathering mechanics and the missions?
Read on!
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Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!
How can a guild best support their crafters in SWTOR, part 2
With the small amount of material available on the crew skills system it is really hard to speculate on what I think will be important for a guild to focus on when trying to support their crafting efforts. I am going to speculate anyway though because it can’t hurt to guess at this stage.
Read on!
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Swtorcrafter Bounty Hunter!
(A topic suggested by my loyal blog reader Daelda, thanks!)
The question I want to pose to you today is:
How can a guild best support their crafters in SWTOR?
One of the things I absolutely hate to see in a guild group is a lack of optimization of equipment. When I see guild groups in game and I mouse over their equipment and they are wearing shoddy, mismatched gear that is tiers below the optimization that I as a crafter know is available, it makes me sad.
It could be this way for many reasons, either they don’t know any better, or possibly their guild crafters are failing in gearing up the guild. If it is the latter then possibly it stems from a lack of support from the people they need to be gearing up.
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My question to you today is:
What if the class you choose affects your crew skills ability?
In past games that I have played I have found that sometimes the class I choose to play affects the potential I have to use the crafting system to its fullest amount. By using certain mechanics of a class system sometimes you can gain advantage over other aspiring master craftsmen looking to advance to grandmaster craftsman status.
Some examples of this to let you know what I mean would be like one of the characters I used to have in Ultima Online.
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