Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

BioWare Announces TWO New Weekly Blogs – Q&A and Dev Summary

Ok, now it’s OFFICIALLY back to Friday Updates!  BioWare has announced the launch of two new weekly blogs: the Weekly Q&A as well as a Dev Tracker Summary!

First up, the Weekly Q&A will be an official thread in the General Discussion forum where players can ask questions until Tuesdays at 2:00pm CST at which point the thread is closed, and they pick 10 questions from the thread and answer them in the blog entry on Friday. The thread is open now, so head over there and get askin’!

Next we have the weekly Dev Tracker Summary. Personally, I like Yellow Posts, which is OUR weekly dev tracker summary… but if you feel you MUST go to the source, BioWare is happy to oblige! Each week they will post a roundup of the important developer posts. Our weekly dev tracker roundup is one of the most popular features on the site, so I’m sure it will be there too. 

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Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

BioWare Posts First In A Series Of New Player Video Guides

It’s Friday. It’s an Update. So I’m gonna call it a Friday Update!

BioWare just published their first in a series of video guides geared toward helping new players get up to speed on playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. The new videos reside in the already-helpful but little known New Player Guide.

The first one is called “Begin Your Journey” and features none other than Eric Musco, BioWare’s Social Media Coordinator (and formerly of TOROcast) helping players along the path of selecting their server, explaining the server types and creating your character.

Enjoy the soothing sounds of Musco’s voice as you relax and watch the video!

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Posted by Cormeister | 2 Comments

Ask A Jedi: Class Quests And Speeders

Stand aside Master Gnost-Dural! The Ask A Jedi crew is here to answer all of your burning questions about Star Wars: The Old Republic! Powered by R2-Db’s question and answer feature, we will answer the highest rated questions each and every week. So sit back, relax, and let us drop some knowledge on you, Ask A Jedi-style!

Just a pair of questions for you this week. First, Winterborne asks: “Can other people help out with class quests?“. The answer to that question is comprised of two parts. To begin, yes, as with any quest in the game, you can group up with someone to make your class quests a little bit easier. However, since your class quests are your personal story, the player that you group up with will not be able to participate in the dialog options for any of your class quests (but they can listen to the dialog).

Your choices for your class quests are your own and no one can force you to watch a cutscene or make a choice that you do not want to make. By contrast, you can be forced to watch a cutscene that you did not want to see during a normal group quest Flashpoint, depending on what dialog options your group mates selected.

The second part of this is that if the player you are grouping with is the same class as you, they will need to go into the game settings and enable an option to allow them to enter class quest areas of a player that is the same class as they. The main reason for this is that your character may be farther along in the story than the player that you are grouping with. In order to prevent story spoiling, the game will actually disallow a player from entering the class quest area of another player with whom they share the same class, unless they specifically say that they want to be able to enter those areas. Be careful of spoilers if you plan on going into a class quest instance of a friend who is playing the same class as you!

Lastly, gnarf posted this question on R2-DB: “Where can I buy 110% speeders?” If you just recently hit level 50 and bought the highest level speeder training, you may be on the lookout for vendors where you can buy better looking 110% speeders. Credit must go to DevliN who found this terrific article on OldRepublic.net that lists most (if not all) of the 110% speeder models available in TOR. This compendium describes where all of the speeders are located and how much they cost or what is required to obtain them (some drop off of Operation bosses). You will definitely want to check out this article if you are in the market for a new 110% speeder.

 

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Posted by Lethality | 5 Comments

1.7 Million Active Subscribers + Growing – EA Earnings Call

In what has to be seen as extremely good news, Electronic Arts announced during their earnings conference call today that Star Wars: The Old Republic has sold over 2 million copies, and currently has over 1.7 million active subscribers – and growing. MarketWatch reports:

“We are pleased to report a strong holiday quarter driven by Battlefield 3, FIFA12 and a strong showing by our digital games and services,” said Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello. “Star Wars: The Old Republic is developing a committed community of players with more than 1.7 million active subscribers and growing.”

Without a doubt, that makes it the fastest growing MMO to date, easily outpacing World of Warcraft, Warhammer, RIFT and others. Of course the test of time will be if they can retain and even grow that number, but I’d say the signs look good!

Congratulations to BioWare, EA and LucasArts on this tremendous accomplishment and milestone! Head over to MarketWatch for the full press release.

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Posted by Lethality | 6 Comments

The First Ever Guild Summit Announced – March 4-6 in Austin! Stephen Reid & David Bass Q&A

In case you’ve been hiding under a sand crawler all day and missed it, BioWare made quite an announcement today – the first ever Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Summit!

In what promises to be the event of the season – catering specifically to the needs of the guild leadership community – BioWare is opening up their Austin studio to allow guild leaders from across the globe to come together to give their input and feedback about the past, present and future of Star Wars: The Old Republic!

TL;DR: First thing’s first. If you’re the leader of a guild in Star Wars: The Old Republic – no matter the size, shape or style – BioWare wants you in Austin! Obviously there’s a finite amount of space available, so be sure to head over to fill out the application ASAP!

We were lucky enough to grab a few minutes of time from Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid and Senior Community Coordinator David Bass to ask them about the Guild Summit, and see what kind of beans we could get them to spill. Luckily, they obliged our request and the Q&A follows.

On a side note, we’ve had the privilege to attend the Fan Site Summits in Austin, and the Guild Summit seems poised to deliver all of that excitement and more, to even more people! If you are one of the lucky attendees, come back here and let us know, and maybe you could even file a report on behalf of Ask A Jedi! We’d love to have you!

Without further adieu, I present Messrs. Stephen Reid and David Bass!

Guild Summit 2012 Q&A – Stephen Reid & David Bass

Ask A Jedi: So, the first Star Wars: The Old Republic Guild Summit! Very cool! Give us all the details! Date? Time? Place? 

David Bass: We’re holding the Guild Summit from March 4^th-6^th here in Austin, TX. We’re going to have guild leaders from all over the world coming out to speak directly with the designers of The Old Republic so that we can gather their feedback first hand, discuss the state of the game and talk about future developments. We’re looking forward to some great discussions!

AAJ: Obviously, guilds are a very important part of an MMO community. Can you tell us a bit about how this whole idea came about?

Stephen Reid: Doing a Guild Summit was one of those big ideas we’ve had for a while; I think we first discussed it in a ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ sort of way back when we did the first Fansite Summit last year. We’re always listening to the community and getting their feedback across all our channels, but nothing beats a one-on-one, face to face meeting, so this was our ultimate goal.

AAJ: How can guilds be a part of this and possibly attend?

DB: Well, we’ve invited a number of guilds already, but one of the pieces of feedback we saw during the Fansite Summits last year was that people want to have the option of attending events on their own, so we’re opened up an application which you’ll find here. Guild leaders can apply there from now through February 10^th, at which point we’ll contact guild leaders and let them know whether we have space for them or not. Obviously we want to allow as many people as possible to attend, but the hotel only has so much space for us, so we’re going to have to limit the capacity.

SR: We really want to stress that guilds of any size or style can apply. We want to host a wide variety of players of all different types, so whether your guild is based around a style of play, a specific theme or maybe you’re just big (or small) we want to hear from you.

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Rich Vogel Talks Bugs & Exploits

For fans of the MMO genre, Rich Vogel needs no introduction. He spent his early career working on titles such as Meridian 59, Utlima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies – three of the most genre-defining MMO games of our time. Today however, Rich wears the hat of Executive Producer on Star Wars: The Old Republic at BioWare Austin, and as such has some pretty big boots to fill down in Texas.

This afternoon, he posted a developer blog for fans and players of Star Wars: The Old Republic to let them know how BioWare goes about prioritizing (and fixing) bugs and exploits, and how that meshes (and doesn’t interfere with) new content development:

Let me start by explaining how we go about determining when to fix an issue in the live game, whether it is a bug or an exploit. Let’s begin with exploits – those cases when we determine that a bug in the code can give an unfair advantage to a player. (Remember, not all bugs are exploits!)

If an exploit is discovered that threatens players’ experience in the game or the in-game economy, we will usually try to create an Emergency Patch to fix that exploit. Before we declare something an emergency though, we have to validate the issue with our internal Quality Assurance, or QA team. They gather data working with our Customer Service, analytics, and development teams to determine the extent of the exploit and the steps needed to reproduce it. Once we have the steps, we work on a plan to fix the issue. Depending how long the issue will take to fix and how risky it is, we will decide if we need to temporarily disable the cause of the exploit in the game.

Head on over to SWTOR.com for Rich’s full blog entry – it’s well worth a read for any TOR fan!

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