Dec 5, 2011

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Blue Milk & Cereal: What Do You Think About Veteran Rewards?

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!

It is no secret that BioWare, both as a company and as a developer has many fans that love and value the games that it has created over the years. There are a great number of fans who were extremely excited when Star Wars: The Old Republic was announced back in 2008 and have been closely following the course of the game development ever since. These players have been following the game for over 3 years, and it’s not even out yet!

This got me thinking. Will TOR have some sort of veteran rewards for loyal players who have either followed or played the game for any lengthy period of time?

Certainly this isn’t the first time such system is being talked about or implemented. Star Wars Galaxies has a veteran reward system that allows players to pick a reward once they accumulate a certain level of consecutive activity. More importantly, it allows players to trade these items, allowing true collectors to become virtuosos in their area and others who are not interested – at least to gain some in-game currency for these rewards. This would seem to play right into the social plans BioWare has for TOR as well.

What do you think? Should player loyalty be rewarded? Should TOR have its own version of veteran reward system? Let us know!

What do you think about veteran rewards?

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Nov 22, 2011

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Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Trying Harder To Avoid Spoilers?

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!

As most of you reading this right now know, just three days ago the NDA on Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially lifted (dropped?), and  fan sites, blogs and online communities everywhere were flooded with new information ranging from rare colors for lightsabers to pictures of the Emperor. While I’m sure we’re generally excited to see this influx of info, for a game that is as heavy in its story department as TOR – spoilers can potentially ruin the excitement of discovery – a big incentive for many players.

BioWare has recently created a separate “spoiler section” on the official TOR forums to try and mitigate it somewhat, but  every now and then, you will see a thread title (fully unintentionally, we’d like to think) mentioning something that is supposed to be discovered by the player. As with any game, the closer you get to release – the higher the chance that someone will spoil the ending for you (not just games, by the way, think of “Snape kills Dumbledore” spoilers). That is why a portion of the player base usually decides to avoid all large communities to prevent any of the game story being spoiled.

There’s no question that as of a few days ago, it’s gotten a lot harder to avoid spoilers. The question is, are you doing more to avoid seeing them? Let’s hug it out below!

Are you doing more to avoid spoilers now that the NDA is lifted?

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Nov 20, 2011

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Blue Milk & Cereal: What Do You Expect From The Legacy System 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!

Just a few days ago we finally learned about the long rumored, almost mythical Legacy system. A lot of community members are still not exactly sure what this system will bring to the game and how it will affect gameplay (or future play-throughs), but we do have some theoretical guidance from James Ohlen:

…At its core the Legacy system is about allowing players to create a family tree of characters. Family is pretty important to the Star Wars universe, with the Skywalker family having one of the most interesting dynamics in movie history.

The current beta build is said to only contain parts of the full Legacy system and it was already hinted that most of these additional features will be expanded on and delivered via a post-launch patch:

We already have plans for how we will expand the functionality of the Legacy System in one of our major post-ship patches. This will include being able to shape your Legacy’s family tree, and give you a reward for all those Legacy Levels.  

As of right now, we do know that after completing Chapter 1 of the the class storyline, players will be able to gain access to the actual Legacy system and have all subsequent characters contribute to one shared pool of experience that will potentially grant us with rewards and bonuses. However, we do not know all the details and this gives us the perfect opportunity to speculate and ask our dear readers about their opinion on this system!

So what do you expect from a Legacy system in TOR? Do you like the idea of having a Legacy system? Let us know below by answering the polls and don’t forget to leave a comment to share your thoughts!

Do you like the idea of the Legacy System?

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What would you like to see from the Legacy System that wasn't already confirmed?

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Nov 14, 2011

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Blue Milk & Cereal: Should TOR Have A Grace Period At Launch And For How Long?

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!

One of the biggest incentives for pre-ordering TOR is Early Game Access. Everyone who pre-orders will get Early Game Access, though the length of it will be determined by the date you entered your pre-order code. As we already know, it will last up to 5 days.

While we’re all extremely excited to play TOR on launch day, December 20th, chances are that if you pre-ordered a physical copy, it may not be there in time for you to continue playing; you will need to enter the license key into your account. Even if you ordered for same day delivery, it won’t be delivered until business hours (or later) on that day, and most likely the servers will have been open since midnight.

As such, the community is asking BioWare if we will have a grace period after the expiration of Early Game Access to allow for all the deliveries to be, well… delivered! There is an ongoing thread on the official community forums that raises a similar question and Stephen Reid was swift to reply to that thread:

We’ll have more information on our launch plans soon. There are multiple moving parts, so I’d ask you to be patient while we get details finalized. 

We hope this is a sign that a grace period is indeed in the cards. The next reasonable question, of course, is how long should it last? Another five days? A week? Until January? Due to the holidays and whatever shipping method was chosen, there’s a real chance that some will have their delivery delayed until after Christmas and maybe well into New Year.

So what do you think? How long of a grace period after Early Game Access ends should there be, if any?

Should there be a grace period at launch, and for how long?

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Nov 13, 2011

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Blue Milk & Cereal: Should TOR Have Built-In Voice Chat?

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!

One of the keys to being successful in a team-oriented game, be it an MMO, FPS or street hockey, is having good communication between teammates. There is no real need to explain the benefits of this, but instead what we need to focus on are the actual tools that each player has at his or her disposal to communicate with the group.

In case of TOR, we expect to have all the traditional group-oriented tools, such as target markers, group-wide messages, ready-checks and many other bells and whistles that are already used every day by millions of gamers. A significant portion of MMO gamers also resort to using a voice-over-IP application like Mumble, TeamSpeak or Ventrilo to better coordinate and organize the group activity. In fact, many guilds require its members to have one of these programs installed. (Editor’s Note: Don’t forget you can hop on Ask A Jedi’s own Mumble server any time! Details here: Come Mumble With Us.)

To get around this, some games have their own built-on voice chat. For example, World of Warcraft implemented an in-game VOIP function, allowing players to communicate with the group members without the need of running additional third-party software.

Perhaps its just me, but I would love to be able to make TOR even more social with voice chat (of course with a easy function to mute, for those cases when a player is unaware he’s blasting Justin Bieber at full volume to everyone in a group). So far, BioWare has indicated that “third party programs work great for this.” Read into that what you will.

What do you think – should TOR have a voice chat? Let us know by answering the poll below and leaving a comment!

Should TOR have built-in voice chat?

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