Anyone visiting the fleet today should hear a little message about how there is a planetary alert on Tatooine. Rakghouls have been spotted on the planet and citizens are recommended to stay away for the time being, but what is the fun in that?
The announcement is to inform players of the first ever in-game event of SWTOR, occurring on Tatooine. A ship carrying the Rakghoul plague has crashed on Tatooine, releasing a large amount of these monsters north-east of Outpost Therazan. Players will be able to tackle some new dailies there that reward “Rakghould DNA”, which can then be turned in to vendors in the same area for some event related items. These include black-green color crystals, and infected companion kit that will let you tun a companion into a Rakghoul, and even a Rakghoul mini-pet. There are also some new infected world bosses for player to take down as well. If the fleet announcement is to be believed then there should be new planets added to this event as time goes on.
No word yet on how long this event will be taking place, but keep you eyes on swtor-life.com as we bring you all the info as the event progresses.
Edit: Some new info I have discovered since posting this. The world bosses on Tatooine are located at the Sarlacc Pit, in Outlaws Den, and the other is an infected version of Trapjaw which can be found in his same location out in the Dune Sea.
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 »
We had three major reveals and one major trailer released from the Old Republic headquarters during this year’s E3.There were a bunch of interviews by the major media outlets, yet most of the information heard there was already known to the people that follow this game for years now. I tend to look at the fan site interviews and gameplay impressions to get the really interesting information and new reveals.
When the first cinematic trailer “Deceived” came out everyone’s minds were blown away. None expected the second trailer “Hope”, because by that time we all knew the game was still some ways off and spending even more money on a super cool trailer would seem unexpected. We all knew that there was going to be a third trailer and since it lacked that element of surprise of the first two it had to be the best in the bunch. What followed was 6 minutes of epic Star Wars cinema and “Return” made all the fans squee like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert.
The very first big piece of info came out through a Gamespot live show with Daniel Erickson where Daniel showed what is the last quest in a chain of 10 group quests on Alderaan. This is the fight with Bouris Ulgo, self proclaimed king of Alderaan himself. The interesting thing about this footage is this is not a flashpoint. It is group content that is not like your regular instance. It is just something existing in the world that you can only do with a group. This is fun because it is still a big boss fight, but not as extensive as a flashpoint. I wonder if it is repeatable? UPDATE: Lethality of askajedi.com explained to us that during his talk with Daniel he found out that this is not repeatable and it is a cinematic ending to a long quest chain, yet, you do get your own “phase” or “instance” to do the quest in so others wouldn’t mob steal your boss. Beside what looked like a fun storyline and an OK event we learned that there are item sets (the trooper had what seemed to b e a 7 piece epic gear set) that have bonuses for more pieces you wear. We also see that there are low level epics, because one of the pieces in the set was level 13.
What followed was for me the best display of SWTOR at E3. It was a live feed on EA.com with Daniel Erickson playing Tatooine and answering viewers’ questions live. For the first time we saw a Jawa companion called Blizz, which made a lot of people squee until they learned that only Bounty Hunters can have those. We also saw vehicles, a small quest line on Tatooine and just in general some fighting and questing on one of the planets. Turns out Tatooine is really huge, because Daniel spent a better part of the demo just flying on his speeder from one place to another and still, when looking at the big planet map, you could see that he traveled only a portion of the planet’s whole surface. We learned that there is a lot of PvP happening in the Dune sea and it was just fun watching the game being played for a whole hour.
The last major reveal was showing for the first time any information about raids (or operations as they are called in TOR) in a form of a teaser trailer. Not much more has been said about raids other than what we see in the trailer. We know that the operation’s name is Eternity Vault. It is located on the planet Belsavis (a prison planet) and the story behind it is that an evil ruler of the universe from 10.000 years ago is locked in that Vault, which is opened by accident. We know for sure that there are 8 player raids and that these represent the “easy mode” versions. There are going to be larger raids than this, and people have been counting the number of players in the trailer until their eyes started to bleed in order to determine exactly what is the number of players we can expect to see in a raid. The current tally is 16, but this is all subject to change through game testing.
To learn even more information about the game in its current state you should visit all the fansites that reported from the event. I’ll give you a rundown of the articles I found the most informative.
Darth Hater did a list of general things learned that sums up a lot of small things from the game they saw while playing or watching others play
Published by Mikro under E3,video on Jun. 09. 2011.
Here’s an officially released video of gameplay on Tatooine. This is similar to what we saw Daniel Erickson and Stephen Reid play during the live stream event on the first day of E3. You can enjoy it in full HD beauty bellow or even download it from the official site.
Raid info at Gametrailers.com; Belsavis has various enviroments (Snow, Jungle, Lava); Ancient prison from ancient race is on the planet; Belsavis trailer being shown.; Imperial vs Republic conflict compromised the prison; Guy that got released ruled 20.000 years ago over 10,000 planets; You have to defeat him.
4 minutes of gameplay footage from the show floor. This is the full length version of our previous video
Razer, maker of gaming peripherals, has created SWTOR themed gaming gear. They have a trailer and images of it on their site and there is also a contest going on. We will have more on this once we talk to Razer ourselves.
Tatooine is absolutely huge. Even with a mount it took a while to get from one place to another
Blizz is a Jawa companion that only Bounty Hunters receive. He is a DPS gadgeteer.
Companions have their own equipment screen, but not all of them change their look (like the Jawa companion). Those that don’t change look with gear have special “different look kits” that we’ll here more about soon
Player mounts (vehicles) have different designs, speeds and cost
There are Sarlaac in the game and you can chuck people into them. Whether they were thinking PvP or PvE is unclear.
Droid companions get their own unique type of armor plating, as in the KOTOR series
There is one more warzone that has not be announced and that people will be excited about because it is “special”.
Tatooine is visitable by all classes, Dune Sea will be a huge PvP server hotspot
When you die, there is a Medical Probe option that revives you exactly where you died. Upon revival you have 12 secs of Ultra-Stealth that no one can see.
You can not level purely through PvP
Due to the previous post getting humongous I have decided to create the Part 2 of our live blog. Hope you stay with us because we still gave about 4 hours of coverage left.
Several screenshots have just been released as part of the E3 2011 SWTOR media kit. They include in-game screens of Tatooine, Alderan “scenario” (all of these are entitled Ulgo .. make your own guesses here) and Vehicles (player mounts). Here are the screens:
Visitors of Penny Arcade Expo have been busy recording various gameplay sessions all throughout day 1 of the convention and we have gathered all the relevant videos in this one post. There is some more footage of Taral V flashpoint as well as some starting planets gameplay. We also have Daniel Erickson giving a few more presentation of various planets and I suspect we will be seeing all of these videos as downloadable content from the official site. Until then enjoy.
Taral V Jedi Knight group gameplay
Video shows full in-game cinematic for the instance telling us the background story of why are we fighting this hard fight. Flashpoint footage is from the first third of the instance and the person playing is a clicker (you have been warned). Quality is Full HD and the video is worth your bandwidth.
Taral V Jedi Knight group gameplay – Last Boss
Video shows the last third of Taral V instance including the fight (and wipe) with the last boss. *spoiler alert* Last boss seems to have an add so it requires some coordination and unfortunately the Trooper died and Jedi Knight was not able to take aggro from the healers quickly enough (not his fault). The person playing seems to be a veteran MMO player and you can see just how smooth the gameplay is when played by a knowledgeable player. The video is HD and gets 5 stars from me.
Taral V Jedi Sage group gameplay
Jungle part of Taral V from the Jedi Sage perspective. Video is HD with detailed shot of the UI in the end
Bounty Hunter Hutta gameplay
We see the starting zone for Bounty Hunter with some great cutscenes and a chubby BH as our protagonist. HD quality is available and I recommend watching it this way because it brings out the best out of the game footage.
Hoth – presented by Daniel Erickson
We see some areas of Hoth with surprising volcanic activity and future questing grounds set inside ice caves and ship graveyards. Available in HD quality as well. Thanks to Engrey for the footage.
Tatooine – presented by Daniel Erickson
Official trailer showing in-game footage of Tatooine vistas.
Sith Warrior – 14 minutes on Korriban
The video shows all cutscenes and footage from questing inside a cave on Korriban. This is footage similar to the one we’ve see at Gamescom last year, but nice to see it again.
_t.jpg)
_t.jpg)
_t.jpg)
