Prologue / Act 1: Scene 1 / Act 1: Scene 2 / Act 1: Scene 3
Intermission
I am pausing here to take a good look around. I have talked about the first three planets that have actual PvP on them. I have also touch on the two planets that have no actual world PvP on them after the origin planets.
I want to give you a list of planets and their levels for each faction. There is not much difference in the list, except that the origin planets are different and there are two planets that trade places depending on the faction. Other than that, both factions are on the same planets at the same levels. Continue Reading »
This week marked the first of BioWare’s promised “Community Q&A” blogs where the developers answer various questions posed to the by members of the SWTOR community. They orignally stated that they would be answering 10 questions a week but the players must have hit them with some good ones because they went ahead and answered 15 of the biggest questions concerning the community.
You can read some of the highlights after the jump. Continue Reading »
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.
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 »
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 »
PvP: Act 1; Scene 2
Our next world PvP planet is Tatooine.
There are two safe zones on Tatooine. Anchorhead is the space port and Republic safe zone. Mos Ila is the space port for the Imperial side. Everything in between is PvP. There is even a small area that you can go free-for-all called Outlaw’s Den.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed. First, I play Republic, and on a PvP server. As I roam the sands of Tatooine, I see very few Imperial players. I am not sure if it’s just how the quests are spread out, but as I leveled on this planet, and coming back for a visit to refresh my memory, I saw very few Imperial players. Continue Reading »
Players who have played since launch already know the order of the planets near the beginning of your epic adventure. The Empire starts out either on Hutta (Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter) or on Korriban (Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor) then moves on to the capital planet of Dromund Kaas. The Republic starts out on either Ord Mantell (Smuggler and Trooper) or on Tython (Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular) then moves on to the capital planet of Coruscant. These are the sanctuary planets. The opposing faction can’t visit these locations. So where does PvP start? Continue Reading »
So, I have been trying PvP in pretty much all its formats since launch. I have to say that I am happy with it overall. Continue Reading »
Server types have been announced and explained. We have PvE, PvP, RP-PvE and RP-PvP, so all the classics we have come to expect from our MMOs are present. Still, the question remains, how will they be named? This is an important decision for the community. Not many would want to be on a server named “Snugglypuff” or “Jar-Jar,” especially among those in the PvP Community, I suspect.
In games I have played in the past, server types were given names. In LotRO, the server names correspond to locations within the books and games. EVE Online only has one server. World of Warcraft and Rift are a mixture of NPC names and locations. So, what sort of names should be used for SWTOR servers? And, should those names have different themes based on the server type?
My suggestion is to use ship types, vehicle types and locations for PvE Servers. Imagine playing on the “Kessel Run,” the “Void Star” or even the “Phantom.” How about famous character names for PvP Servers? “Revan,” “HK-47,” “Vader,” etc. And planet names for RP servers? “Alderaan,” “Belsavis,” “Dagobagh,” etc.
Any thoughts or suggestions? Is it a good idea to have a different theme for different server types? Or not? What about RP-PvP vs RP-PvE? Should they have different themes? Or should they all share a single theme?
Should Bioware even release such a list ahead of the game starting? As Stephen Reid said, “Early server list con: massive population imbalance on servers that people think don’t sound ‘cool’. That’s the biggest.” Not everyone will agree on what constitutes “Cool,” and you can’t make fifty, a hundred, or even more servers, all with “equally cool” names. Sure, you can weed out the “Jar-Jar” names… but there are only so many “Vader,” “Void Star” and “Kessel Run” names to be had.
*Daelda and Rosie contributed to this article.
You can follow Rosie on Twitter at @Dawnsrose. You can also contact her directly via email at swtor.rosie@gmail.com.
Server Types Announced For SWTOR
Continuing in the trend of basking us in SWTOR knowledge on a day that’s not even a Friday, Bioware’s David Bass made an announcement of the server types in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO!
This is information I have been wanting to hear for quite some time. To allow me to plan ahead is always something I am thankful for and with this knowledge at least we can be ready for which server type we want to choose at launch. This information also coincides nicely for guilds who just a hour ago found out the news that guild phase 3 was beginning.
Be sure to read the article in full and comment on the SWTOR.com official forums here.
Here is what was posted by David, choose your server armed with this information!
Continue Reading »
