Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

Scheduled Maintenance: Saturday 28th (Yes, Tomorrow!)

Community Production Coordinator Amber Green just posted an alert for scheduled maintenance, which in itself is a good thing. However, this is an “extra” maintenance period to occur on Saturday morning, January 28th:

We are working on getting a patch deployed to address various issues and we expect it to deploy in the early hours of the morning tomorrow (CST) and take no longer than four hours.

There will be notifications that the servers will be going down before the patch is put in place, so please keep an eye out for these. You can also check this forum post for the most updated information.

It must be a very important patch to do a 2-a-week patch cycle, so we’ll keep you updated when we learn more! For now, head over to read Amber’s full post.

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Posted by Lethality | 18 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Miss Swimming?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Editor’ Note: I’ve had fun lately going back through some old polls we did from well before the game was out, so I think it’s equally fun to re-ask some of those questions again! We’re doing that today with an oldy but goody… swimming! You can also read my opinion on the whole topic here in Lethal Injection: The Drowning Pool

As you stroll through the Jedi compound on Tython, you are continually awestruck by the beauty of the planet. The landscape is dotted with sparkling lakes and one with a particularly beautiful waterfall catches your eye. You run over to check it out. As you stand at the edge, you wonder how deep it is. You stare at it, sigh, and walk away. There will be many more unexplored lakes in your future. Somewhere in your Jedi training they forgot to include the skill of swimming.

Aion, World of Warcraft and other popular MMOs all offer the ability to swim. One could even say that swimming has become a standard feature of modern MMOs. When BioWare announced that swimming would not be included at TOR’s release, there was a massive outcry from TOR’s community. Citing that they would have to create underwater content to justify adding swimming, BioWare’s Georg Zoeller responded that it’s something they might do at a later time.

So, are you going to miss swimming? Do you think adding swimming at a later date is a bad thing? Will it affect your decision to buy TOR?

 

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Posted by Zlatto | 23 Comments

Security Key Fob Fumble?

My name is Zlatto, its been 22 hours and 15 minutes since my last account login and the hand tremors and sweats have started.

Now my fob is not lost, it just seems that the Digipass GO6 “made in China” model I received in the Collector’s Edition box has a bad button. It was working fine for the first six weeks, but started acting up a few days ago. I would have to push the button multiple times at multiple angles to sometimes get a number to appear. I sent out a Customer Service request and received this:

I am Protocol Droid W6-C9 Human-Cyborg Relations…

I am sorry to hear that you cannot access to your account because you have lost your security key.

We regret to inform you that we cannot deal with your request through email. In order to protect your account, all Security Key issues are dealt with via our Customer Service telephone support.

I happened to be traveling at the time (on vacation with Mrs. Zlatto and I really did not have the time to call in and wait on hold for a live person) I did not loose my key, it was just acting up. So I suffered through the button mashing and was hopeful that when I got back home I could address my inconsistent access issues.

By the time I arrived home, the fob was giving me a number approximately every twenty presses rather than the previous three to five. I am in a guild called  Lorem Ipsum and we are a close knit group. We are friends in real life and are on instant messenger with each other through out our work days. When one of us is at work and another is not, the slacker will give them a play by play as they game. It feels like a friendly IM kick to the nards to remind you that they are leveling past you while you sort through mindless emails about some car that left the lights on out in the parking lot. So when I shared my frustration over IM about my malfunctioning key fob one of my guild mates (Deacon) reminded me of the app. Well, reminded makes it sound like I am from a warm and fuzzy guild,which is far from the truth.  It was more like he mocked me for being a technical Luddite with a fob, as the app requires no watch battery or rubber button to give me access. Makes you want to join our guild right?!

So I logged onto TOR and after 20-30 button mashes I was able to access my account info. I found the section on the left hand side that mentioned Security Key, and you can see what I get below.

Nothing about removing my key? I scoured the site for some way to remove the key from my account. Nothing.  So I sent out another request to Client Services, asking about removal of the fob.

I am Protocol Droid W6-C9 Human-Cyborg Relations…

Thank you for contacting us. I have received your transmission regarding the removal of security key in your account. However, we regret to inform you that we cannot deal with your request through email. In order to protect your account, security key issues are dealt with via our Customer Service telephone support.

Oh my. There is no route for self-service in relation to a process that is set up via self-service?

When I called in to start my removal, I got a nice welcome from the Doctors and then was informed that BioWare was experiencing a high volume of calls. I am not a specialist in Customer Service, but I would think that allowing players to self service a process that is added via self service would help shorten the long call waiting lines.  I only had a short time before I had to do some errands so… I still have a malformed button, my crew is not working and my guild mates are leveling ahead of me. Looks like my lunch hour will be on hold for me being on hold. My fob has given up, what flarking koochoo designed this process?

My name is Zlatto, its been 22 hours and 52 minutes since my last login. My guild has left Hoth without me, I am alone.

Let us know your experiences with they security key system and process!

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Posted by Lethality | 1 Comment

Kaon Under Siege – Video Guide

Pokket over at MMORPG.com put together a nice video guide for the hard mode of BioWare’s newest Flashpoint, Kaon Under Siege! She takes the time to highlight the bosses and give strategy tips, and the entire guide is recoded from her perspective as a healer. So if you’re a healer in Star Wars: The Old Republic you may be especially interested in checking this out!

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Posted by Lethality | 11 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should There Be PvP Arenas In TOR?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

Editor’s Note: Today’s topic is pulled from the Blue Milk & Cereal historical archives. Certain things we asked “back then” have different context now, so it’s fun to see if responses have changed! You can find the original poll here.

PvP: some people love it. Some people hate it.  Pitting a small number of combatants head-to-head gives the developers an easier time of balancing player-versus-player combat by minimizing variables.  This small-scale combat can be intense and visceral. However, in a class-based game like an MMO, it can often be frustrating.

For me, arena PvP always turned into a flavor of the month-based game of rock-paper-scissors. Some months, your class will be the best in the game, but after they nerf it, you might as well reroll instead of PvP.  While these are exaggerative statements, when your class is out of favor with developers, it can be extremely difficult to do well in arena-based PvP. One overpowered class doesn’t pull nearly as much weight in large-scale battles like TOR’s Warzones.

Despite all these gameplay complaints based on my own opinion, arena-style PvP does have basis in Star Wars lore.  From the gladiatorial arenas on Geonosis to the one-versus-one battles on Taris in Knights of The Old Republic, small-scale battles have always had their place in Star Wars.

Do you think there should be arena-style PvP in TOR? Or do you think the large-scale battles of TOR’s Warzones capture the heroic battles of Star Wars well enough?

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

Gabe Amatangelo Talks PvP, Faction Balance, Mods And More With Total Biscuit

The Cynical Brit is back, and this time he brought with him a nice audio interview with BioWare’s Lead End-game Designer Gabe Amatangelo!

Fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic will enjoy the entire interview, but the portion about mods and add-ons was particularly interesting to me. TotalBiscuit also doesn’t pull any punches when asking about how end-game shinies reconcile with a story-driven RPG.

Have a listen, and make sure to always check out the Cynical Brit for fun of all sorts!

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Posted by Lady Republic | 5 Comments

Council Chambers: The “Wheres” – Come Play With Me!

Council Chambers is all about the ins and outs of guild leadership in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Each week, we’ll look at running and managing a guild through good times, bad times and everything in between.  

There you are. You’ve got a guild, a website, an application, rules, a mission statement, and a set of criteria to apply to any applicants. Hmm, it seems like something is missing….Oh right! Members.

Now, I am going to preface this post by saying, a brand-spanking-new game is always in interesting time to be starting a new guild and recruiting new members. On the one hand, TONS of people are looking for a guild! On the other hand – people at this stage of the game are very flighty in general, and there is a lot of new character rolling and re-rolling or guild-hopping as people search for their perfect home that takes place early on in a game’s life cycle. Things will get a lot better in about two months from now, but right now it might involve a lot of member turn-over. So keep that in mind, and don’t become discouraged if you don’t have a solid stable of new members ready to go. Even then though, you should still try to start building a name for your guild and trying to get the word out. But – how?

The first tool you have at your disposal is the official forums.

No please, don’t leave!

I know, I know. A lot of folks despise community forums – and often for good reason. The WoW server community in particular is known for being….how to put this politely….well, as Obi Wan Kenobi said about Mos Eisley, “a wretched hive of scum and villainy.” Anonymity can breed a certain “je ne sais quoi” as I call it (mostly because there really isn’t a word for it that I like to use in polite company); Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade call it something else that’s also fitting. The point is, official game forums are not always the most friendly and helpful lot out there on the wide world of the interweb, so it can be rather scary and daunting to use them and post. It is far too early to know how our own TOR forums will be in the long term, but based on other games it’s likely to be a mixed bag. However, it is one of the first stops a lot of new players will make when looking for a guild. So you will want to stop in there, log in with your guild leader or officer toon, and put up a post.

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Posted by Lethality | 18 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do You Stop For Datacrons?

No day would be complete without the breakfast of Jedi: Blue Milk & Cereal.  Every morning, the team at Ask A Jedi will get Force-induced thoughts coursing through your head with delicious issues from around the galaxy! Join in the discussion below to make your voice heard!

I think we’ve done a BM&C about datacrons once or twice, but I thought I’d take a slightly different spin on it this morning!

As you know, datacrons are placed all around the game world for players to not only find, but figure out how to acquire. Sometimes they’re in plain sight, but the act of getting to them is anything but plain. These evil awesome little mini-goals reward you with permanent stat boosts and codex entries.

Most of the players I’ve run into seem to be of the mindset that while, yes, they want to get all the datacrons, the treat it more like something on their list of chores to do. A common statement heard is “I usually wait until I out level a planet by a few levels, check out a video guide and go back to snap them up.”

Huh? Doesn’t that seem counterproductive to the reason for their existence – to encourage and reward exploration? When I ask about that, they usually say “it takes too long to stop what I am doing to go grab them.” While I may not agree with it, I do understand that statement. Questing and leveling is the main game, the datacrons are an optional sideshow.

However in the name of stopping to smell the roses, I think most players would end up appreciating not “rushing” things, take the time out to grab the datacrons, kill some beasts for the codex entries that you otherwise might skip, and so on. It makes your gameplay experience that much more whole when you don’t focus on the end, but rather what’s right in front of you.

Anyway, I’m just curious – how do you guys go about your datacron hunting? Do you stop immediately when you see one and work on getting it? Do you refer to guides, or do it the “right” way? Have you gotten them all yet?

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Posted by Lethality | 4 Comments

Ability Delay Followup By Georg Zoeller – The Best Is Yet To Come!

Hot on the heels of this morning’s patch, Lead Combat Designer and pro shuffleboard player Georg Zoeller popped onto the forums to assure players that these fixes were important to roll out right away, but more are coming:

That said, we’re not done improving combat responsiveness!

• As mentioned in my blog a few days ago, there are some additional fixes currently on our public test server as part of patch 1.1.1, which will roll out as soon as we’re satisfied with that patch.

• We’ve heard your mixed feedback regarding the new cooldown animation that was part of patch 1.1, and we have improvements to the readability of that UI coming down the pipe.
• We’re looking into improving the accuracy of cast bars. Their behavior should already be significantly improved with today’s patch, but we believe there is still room to improve.
• We’re also working on improvements to the responsiveness of individual ability animations, including faction specific timing differences and issues where shortening an ability activation time does not properly shorten it’s animation.

Head over to read Georg’s full post and join in on the conversation!

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Posted by Raz | 0 Comments

The Nerfherder’s Guide to the Galaxy: Dromund Kaas

 From the crystal-laden caverns of Ilum to the Jundland Wastes of Tatooine, this is your guide to discovering the distant worlds and locales of Star Wars:The Old Republic. Welcome to The Nerfherder’s Guide to the Galaxy! 

“Dromund Kaas is not our home, and in many ways we do not belong here. The Emperor led us here and we made it into something more than we found, but it is still a place of savagery ruled by beasts. We have retaken Korriban, but this remains our seat of power, to remind us of the cost of losing this war. Never forget what the Republic took from us, let that shame fuel your anger.”

- From the Teachings of Lord Kraius

Dromund Kaas, the dark heart of the Sith Empire, is a world of lush jungles dominated by vicious predators that are only slightly less dangerous than the Dark Lords that rule there. During the Golden Age of the ancient Sith Empire, Dromund Kaas was found, colonized, and then largely forgotten as its hyperspace coordinates were lost. Centuries later, following the Great Hyperspace War, an armada of Sith forces vanished into hyperspace to escape the onslaught of Republic forces.

The armada, led by the Sith who became the new Emperor, blindly leapt into hyperspace to avoid any possible contact with hostile vessels. Finally, guided by the Force, they rediscovered the Dromund system and settled on Dromund Kaas as their new capital world. Among the jungles and ruins of the ancient Sith, the Emperor inspired his followers to begin building a new Empire and to prepare for the day when they would reemerge and take their revenge upon the Republic.

One of their first efforts was the construction of the Citadel and Kaas City as testament to the power of the Sith Empire. The Emperor assembled his Dark Council from his most trusted and powerful Sith Lords and began building a strong military force, with a focus on a vast fleet that could reach out and conquer the galaxy in his name. Through dark rituals designed to extend his life, the Emperor transformed the planet’s ionosphere into a frenzied electrical storm that continues to rage centuries later. The entirety of Dromund Kaas is cast in perpetual darkness, illuminated only by the lights of Kaas city and the tempest of power above.

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