Posted by Lethality | 90 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: What Are Your Three Wishes For 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!

Even if you’re the most loyal fan, supporter and player of Star Wars: The Old Republic, you no doubt have some thoughts on what you’d like to see in the game. It’s just human nature – we’re given an inch, and we take a mile. Since BioWare themselves know full well that the long term life of the game depends on quality of service and frequent content and feature updates, I figured we may as well find out what’s on the AAJ Army wish list!

Your wishes might range anywhere from “I want a better GTN interface” to “I’d love to see a new class” to “Why can’t we have more Warzones” to “Fix the damn bugs.” Obviously, the potential wishes of players are going to be as varied as the players themselves. But you can only pick three for this topic!

As for me? My number one wish is for the worlds to feel more alive. I’d very much like to see world events along the lines of festivals, holidays and so on that not only provide additional things to do, but a nice distraction that makes the world feel organic and bigger than just your story. That things are going on with or without you there. Luckily, Game Director James Ohlen confirmed that they plan on doing just this soon, and have had a job opening for Senior Social Systems Designer for quite some time. Here’s hoping they find that person soon!

Due to the nature of the question, this is the first Blue Milk & Cereal we’re doing without a poll! I’m counting on your comments and discussion to fuel this one, so lets see how it goes! So please, let us know – what are your top 3 wishes for Star Wars: The Old Republic?

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Posted by Cormeister | 2 Comments

Yellow Posts: Legacy System & Story Spoilers

Sadly, this week there is very little report in Yellow Posts that hasn’t already been covered. The developers are undoubtedly busy polishing the game, but the community managers have been busing talking on the forums.

We’ve already spent some time discussing the recently announced Legacy System that has been longtime rumored. One of the more controversial items to come out of the whole announcement was the fact that your Legacy surname would apply to all characters across all servers. Given that this choice apply’s to all of your characters, it generated some backlash because of how universal it was. Allison Berryman, Senior Community Coordinator, clarified the situation to say that the Legacy surname would apply to all characters on a single server (not across all servers):

Hello everyone, we’ve updated James’ original post to add some clarification – your Legacy Last Name will affect all characters on a server, not across all servers. The line now says:

Once your character has completed their Chapter 1 storyline, they will be able to choose a Legacy Last Name. This Legacy Last Name must be unique and is shared across all characters on that server – so choose carefully!

Sorry for any confusion!

 The NDA being dropped is undoubtedly a great thing for the community. The only thing, in my mind, that could be argued to be a negative about the NDA drop are story spoilers being released. If you want to know the story, great! There will be tons of sites out there devoted to the story of SW:TOR. However, if you’re like me, you want to save the story for when you play the game. Spoiling the game for others is not desirable so Allison Berryman has laid out how the new official SW:TOR Spoilers forum works:

Is there anything I am not allowed to speak about?
While we want to hear about your SWTOR impressions, we would suggest you talk about certain topics only in certain places. On the official site, we ask you to post story spoilers in the Spoilers Forum, which was created to allow discussion of the game story (without including spoilers in your thread title). Additionally, any feedback and bug reports from your personal gameplay impressions should be left in the official Game Testing Forums where developers can monitor and respond to it directly. Beyond the official site, we ask that you are respectful of the Game Testing Agreement, and of those who may not want to have the game story spoiled, and label your impressions as having spoilers if necessary.

I want to reference a spoiler without discussing it in detail. How do I do that?
Generally, if your impressions are mostly focused around the game’s story, you should post in the Spoilers Forum to ensure you won’t spoil others. If you are posting elsewhere on the official Forums and mention something you think may be a spoiler, you can use the appropriate spoiler tags ([spoiler]Spoiler text goes here[/spoiler]) to hide the spoiler from other community members. This way someone who doesn’t want to have information of the story can avoid potential spoilers, while those who are interested can still access your content.

Any Forums thread that includes a story spoiler in the title will be edited to remove the spoiler, including those in the Spoilers Forum. If we believe that a community member is posting spoilers maliciously, their threads will be removed and they will potentially be given an infraction for violating Forums policy.

What if I don’t want the story spoiled?
On the official site, it would be wise to avoid the Spoiler Forum. Apart from that, spoilers that are part of general impressions or are otherwise posted outside of the Spoiler Forum will be marked with spoiler tags. 

What if I am unsure whether or not this is a spoiler?
On the official site, if you are unsure as to whether or not you are posting spoilers, use the spoiler tags. This will hide the potential spoiler from public view unless the reader makes the active decision to read the hidden text. 

What if the video contains story spoilers?
On the official site, please post any video links in the Spoiler Forum. Away from the official site, as a courtesy to other players, please label your video with the heading ‘Spoiler’.

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Posted by ReDDoT | 25 Comments

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!

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Posted by Momus | 6 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: I Love Ilum – Observations from the Summit

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

A lot of details have been making their way out of the Fansite Summit, but perhaps most tantalizing of the recent items is the sudden openness about Ilum, the hostile and frozen planet of open-world PVP.

Of course, it’s the duty of this columnist to attempt to find some manner of profit in it all, so a quick run-down on the features and how we might make find some opportunities.

First, the most obvious one: the highest-level nodes of resources spawn here. As with other games that had high-level zones that encouraged world player-versus-player, players will be fighting over the best grounds for farming materials. However, unlike other games, the zone does not have a reset or timer. Instead, while farming, you will constantly be under threat, and it will be far more likely that you will encounter a hostile intent on preventing you from harvesting that sweet, sweet cheddar. Full-contact gathering certainly has its place as a sport, but it also cuts into profits. In general, if you yourself are not a PVP (at least in combat) enthusiast, I would recommend going at off-peak hours, unless it turns into the only place to acquire some rare material – in which case, fight on!

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Posted by Lethality | 29 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Should Light/Dark Decisions Change Your Character’s Look?

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!

Yesterday during the Star Wars: The Old Republic panel at New York Comic Con, James Ohlen confirmed that your morality decisions will affect the appearance of your character if you go extreme. This was something that has been talked about for some time, but without any recent confirmation, fans weren’t sure whether if would make it into the game.

Then later during the Q&A sponsored by MMORPG.com, Ohlen revealed in response to a question that only Dark side appearance changes will exist:

No light side appearance change. We toyed with a “wisened old” look but scrapped it. You don’t grow angel wings.

This difference will no doubt cause controversy among some players. While I don’t think anyone wants angel wings, it would be nice to have something if you go completely Light side as well!

On the other hand, I’m not sure if I want something changing the physical appearance of my character beyond what I do in the character creator. What if I don’t like the look of the changes?

What do you guys think? Should morality decisions change the look of your character at all? Would you like to see Light side too?

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