Servers went down, servers came back up, and we were presented with a nice healthy amount of patch notes for our trouble. There were a lot of little fixes in this weeks maintenance, and some little quality of life improvements as well. Almost all areas of the game have been hit with some fixes this week, not surprising since the game has needed some bugs ironed out since the release of 1.2.
Check after the jump for the full list of patch notes this week, and let us know your thoughts on them in the comments section below. Continue Reading »
Darth Hater just released a video they shot at the SWTOR booth at Pax East where a demonstration of the Space Combat feature was held live. Presentation was hosted by Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid and the footage is amazing in all of its Full HD glory. The video shows awesome footage of the space map and then shows us space combat inside an asteroid field. Darth Hater is working on one of their famous dissections of the video and you can find it here.
Premade group has a level 32 Scoundrel (source: Guild Umbra Tweet)
First images from the booth and the queue line:
Click to see full size
Click for full size (thanks to Guild Umbra)
Image by Mos Eisley Radio
With only an hour left before #SWTORPAX kicks off SWTOR Life is following the happenings at the convention Minute by Minute as news pour in. We will scour the internet and all the affiliated fansites in search for all that Old Republic goodness. Feel free to bookmark this post because we will be updating it live with new information. In preparation you can check out our other Penny Arcade Expo East articles:
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.
Released with the press kit are the following concept art images of the Space Combat feature of The Old Republic. Epic Star Wars feeling? I’d say so :).
The Old Republic’s community has been in a frenzy of activity in the past 12 hours. First leaked information about the space combat has emerged from various sources. First, German fansite got a hold of an issue of PC Action magazine (a German publication) that provided details on space combat. Our friends at Ask a Jedi had the details on this as well as the translation of the most important information in the German article.
A heated discussion ensued on the official forums. All of the space combat discussions are being consolidated by Bioware moderators into one monstrous thread with a poll that asks you “Are you happy with the Space Combat details?” (Yes/No/Need more info).
The biggest news is certainly the appearance of the scans from the upcoming PC Gamer magazine. When space combat was announced it was said that PC Gamer will have the exclusive details on the feature and this is the article that details it. There is a page missing but you can find all the most important info without trouble. The scans were found at Darth Hater’s forums
Here’s the recap of the most important info:
Space combat is a tunnel shooter mini game (your ship is propelled along a predefined path and always moving forward while you only choose which weapons to fire and at what targets – there is no free flight like in X-Wing vs Tie Fighter)
There will be 6 different ship types for 8 classes (Jedi Consular and Jedi Knight share the same ship type and so do the Inquisitor and Sith Warrior)
Space combat is a single player instance (at launch at least)!
You can collide with asteroids or other ships
There will be a main quest that will give a token reward you can exchange for items and side quests that will rotate and feature escort missions of different ships or destroy a randomly chosen ship
Each mission is 2-8 minutes long
Blasters and missiles only (and only power of these can be upgraded as you earn rewards)
Character abilities and stats do not affect space combat
That’s it folks. Two to eight minute missions with you moving your ship on X and Y axis while mouse targeting and shooting your enemies. A little action packed mini-game to break the mold. I bet all those that said space combat will resemble KOTOR’s turret mini game are doing their: “I told you so”.
My hunch is that there will be a video of the space combat missions running at GamesCom and since we will be attending we will be bringing you all of the news right from the spot.
Release of Star Wars The Old Republic is still some months away and at this point nobody but the people at Bioware know what it looks like or what it plays like in its entirety. Bioware has been releasing a lot of information in this past year about what the game will consist of, but what we always seem to lack are completely detailed descriptions of the announced features. I guess playing the game and seeing that feature in action is the only way to fully understand it.
There are, however, other games that Bioware released over the years and are playable. They even have some features that are announced for SWTOR. To try and understand to the full extent some of the announced aspects of SWTOR, we have decided to play Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age and Mass Effect series and try and draw conclusions on what we can expect in SW: The Old Republic. It is only reasonable to assume that Bioware will base some of the game elements in their new game on success of that feature in the old games.
Spaceships have played a great role in the Star Wars Universe. It can be argued that space scenes and scenes in spaceships are as important as those happening in more “conventional” environments. It is a Space Opera after all. Millenium Falcon, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy according to Han Solo, is an equally important character as the Droids or the Wookies. In Knights of the Old Republic we, as players, had a chance to own our ship – the Ebon Hawk. It is our means of transportation, our storage facility, it is the place where some major plot-lines are resolved. During 2010 E3 gaming convention Bioware announced that players will also be able to own ships and released a video showcasing the ship’s interior and exterior. In difference to KOTOR, there will be different class ships available. We have created a video pitching KOTOR’s Ebon Hawk versus the ships seen in the SWTOR video.
Welcome to our regular Monday community watch. It’s here so you can fight them Monday blues with some Swtor reading.
Previous week was one of those extremely exciting weeks. Comic Con is behind us and with it the announcement of space combat and player ship customization. This brought mostly positive reactions by the community and speculations are also running rampant, until we get more information scheduled to appear in the PC Gamer magazine.
Preceding the space combat announcement Friday update was Fan Friday displaying some impressive fan made art and renders of Cathar race (not sure if playable or NPC only). There is also a Darth Rasp 3D animationabsolutely worth watching. For the rest of the goodies visit the Fan Friday page.
Podcasts seem to be a big deal in the Star Wars The Old Republic community. There are numerous quality shows and its hard to single out just a few to showcase in our community news. I must mention the always entertaining ToroCast and their episode 62 in which they are joined by a female co-host. Episode two of the Correlian Run Podcast is also available and the girls are super excited with the possibility of Corellia being a playable planet.
How Will You Play? That is the discussion in the official forum started by the developers. Are you a “soloer” or a “raider”. Go here to join in on the constructive discussion here.
Following yesterday’s announcement of the existence of space battles in The Old republic the whole community is very excited and is eagerly awaiting more details on the feature. What we know for sure is that PC Gamer magazine will have an exclusive insider look at the feature in their August 17th issue. Above you can see what the cover will look like. We’re scouring the net for more information and we’re eagerly awaiting the rumored video from G4TV.
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Thanks to this thread on the official forums we became aware of the video below. Apparently, the engine Bioware is using to create SWTOR is capable of producing space combat experiences. The video below is a demonstration of such capabilities by a small developer studio using the same “Hero” engine to create their own Space combat MMO. Whether Space combat in SWTOR will resemble the video below in any way is completely speculative and I must warn against making any conclusions based on the footage you are about to see. I just think this is an interesting find and wanted to share it with you.
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