Mar 8, 2012

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GDC 2012: Vogel & Dickinson Share Secrets Of TOR’s Development

This week at GDC in San Francisco, two BioWare developers very familiar to fans who have followed the development of the game participated in a special panel entitled “There Is Another…” The Escapist was nice enough to give us a report on this session, and we learn some pretty interesting facts in the process!

To make Star Wars: The Old Republic, the staff included 30 people in production, 75 designers, 80 engineers, 40 platform experts, 10 people to localize the game, 10 composers, 140 artists, and 280 people in quality assurance.

Author Megan Carriker goes on to summarize some of the original goals of the game:

One area where they initially failed was with scaling. There are over 240k lines of dialogue in SW:TOR. Over 4,094 characters. Over 321 actors used to create these characters and dialogue. They’re in the Guinness Book of World Records now for this gigantic effort. There’s more voiceover work in SW:TOR than all previous Bioware games combined. The end goal for the game was 20 full planets, over 90 unique areas, and more than 200 hours of gameplay per class (with eight classes).

Needless to say, it’s an interesting read and wish I could have been there for the panel in person! Head on over to The Escapist for the full read!

There Is Another...

There Is Another...

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Mar 7, 2012

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Guild Summit: Roundup!

We thought it was time to make a “roundup” post as we usually do after an important event for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the Guild Summit certainly qualified!

Not only did we learn what to expect in Game Update 1.2: Legacy, the developers seemed more open than in the past about things that they might be working on but not announced – a very different posture from the pre-release chatter.

So what follows is a roundup of content here on Ask A Jedi, but also things from around the web. If you find something you think should be added, by all means let me know!

Ask A Jedi

TORWars

Darth Hater

Massively

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Mar 6, 2012

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BioWare Launches Friends Of TOR Free Trial Program

Do you have several gamer friends who you’ve been trying to talk into playing Star Wars: The Old REpublic, but they’re hesitant to plunk down the cash without trying it first? Well, they don’t have that excuse anymore!

Today BioWare is releasing the Friends of Star Wars: The Old Republic Trial. This program allows any current active subscriber to invite up to 3 of their friends to try the game – for free – for 7 days:

You’ve helped make The Old Republic™ a success and to show our appreciation we are giving all active subscribers the opportunity to invite up to three of your closest friends for a 7-day free trial.* To get started, just log into your account and choose “Friends Trial” in the right navigation.

 

There is also an extensive FAQ about the program which you should check out.

Curiously, there is no incentive for subscribers to actually do this, other than to hopefully get their friends hooked on the game they love. I’m sure BioWare simply wants to make sure there’s always plenty of players available as that’s critical to delivering a true MMO feel and readily available multi-player content.

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Mar 6, 2012

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Patch Notes: 1.1.5 – Roll Away! Plus, Performance Improvements

Today, BioWare pushed Patch 1.1.5 to the live servers, bringing many welcome fixes to players of Star Wars: The Old Republic. While it may pale compared to the shiny that is Patch 1.2 as detailed during the Guild Summit, it’a great to see constant forward movement on a weekly basis from the gang in Austin!

You can find these as well as all previous patch notes at BioWare’s official Patch Notes page on SWTOR.com

Patch Notes – 1.1.5 – 3/6/2012

General

  • Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6).

Classes and Combat

General
  • Moving while channeling an ability (such as Telekinetic Throw and Force Lightning) will no longer cancel the Global Cooldown, which would allow those abilities to deal more damage than intended.

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Mar 3, 2012

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Guild Summit Schedule & Live Stream Details Announced!

As you may be aware, BioWare is hosting the first-ever Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Summit in Austin starting this Monday. They’ve invited over 150 guild leaders from around the world to come and discuss the state of the game directly with BioWare, and learn what’s next for TOR! Ask A Jedi will be there to cover the festivities as well, so it should be exciting!

Up until now, we weren’t sure what coverage BioWare would be able to provide for players that couldn’t make it to Austin, but now we know – a full day of streaming of all of the main events! Starting this Monday at 11:00AM EST (10:00AM Austin Time), players around the globe will be treated to the following schedule of events (times are listed CST/Austin Time):

  • 10:00am – Welcome & Introductions
  • 10:30am – State of the Game and Game Update 1.2 Presentation
  • 11:00am – Break (Livestream offline from 11:00am to 2:00pm)
  • 2:00pm – Operations/Flashpoints Discussion
  • 2:45pm – Player vs. Player Discussion
  • 3:30pm – Legacy Presentation
  • 4:00pm – Economy/Crew Skills Discussion
  • 4:30pm – Roleplayer’s Discussion
  • 5:00pm – Guild Features Discussion
  • 5:30pm – User Interface Presentation
  • 6:00pm – “…And The Rest”
Players will also have the opportunity to ask questions via the Cover It Live service. There’s a link listed for a forum dedicated to the Guild Summit, however it only points to the main community page currently.
It should be an exciting start to the week for players of Star Wars: The Old Republic!


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