Posted by Momus | 8 Comments

Community Blog: James Ohlen – What’s Next For The Old Republic!

As many of you are sinking your teeth (or waiting to, at any rate) into the game, Game Director James Ohlen published a piece in the Community Blog about what we can expect in the future from BioWare.

Welcome to Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. It’s been many years in the making and the team is very proud of what we’ve achieved. Since we’re an online game we are going to continue building on the game for years to come. You can count on us to diligently expand the game and service to surprise and delight you. We’re going to not only respond to your feedback, but also hopefully exceed your expectations on how Star Wars: The Old Republic will evolve over time.

 

Many of you helped make the game what it is today by participating in our testing programs. You’ve watched the game grow over the past year and have been very vocal about things you’d like to see in the game in the future.

 

A team is never finished building a massively multiplayer game, so we’d like to take this opportunity to reveal a little information on what the team is working on for patches coming in the near future. Our priorities have been, and will continue to be, based off of the feedback we receive from our players.

 

-New Content – We will be adding new content to the galaxy on an ongoing basis. These worlds will include Operations, Flashpoints and solo content.

 

-Guild Functionality – Guilds are important to the long term health of any MMORPG. We have a huge list of guild centric features. This will be an ongoing effort that will probably never end. Guild banks are the first thing we’ll be delivering in our plans for increased guild functionality. Eventually we even want to deliver on the promise of the long hinted at “Guild Capital Ships.”

 

-UI customization – You like choice. We hear you! SWTOR is all about choice. Being able to choose how you interact with an online game is something we feel is very important. We are going to be giving more control over the UI as an ongoing effort. This is a very big priority for us.

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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 Lethality | 39 Comments

Legacy System Officially Announced!

[UPDATE] Here’s the Legacy Unlock screen courtesy of @Asros!

 

What a day. Im exhausted from the TORnado that’s happening! But not too exhausted to talk about this!

James Ohlen, in what has to be the ultimate forum lurk of all time, has officially announced the long-suspected Legacy system!

Hey Everyone,

This build has our first iteration of the Legacy System! 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. This version is just the foundational components that we will use to build upon in the future. Here are the features of this iteration:

• 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 all servers – so choose carefully!
• Once you have unlocked your Legacy, any and all characters on that server will now contribute to that player’s Legacy Experience Points. Much like normal experience points, when you reach certain Legacy thresholds, you will increase yourLegacy Level.

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. 

We look forward to reading your feedback on the Legacy System!

–James

[UPDATE] Damion Schubert offered some more clarity on the forums:

You can choose to do one of the following:
– Display your legacy name as your last name (“Raiel Firewalker”)
– Display your legacy name below your name 

Raiel
The Firewalker Legacy

– or choose to hide it altogether. This choice can differ per character.

It seems to play very much into BioWare’s plan of betting on the leveling game, encouraging people to roll characters. It seems you gain Legacy XP when you do this. My personal jury is still out on this one, but…

If you’re interested in talking about the Legacy system or anything else from the Fan Site Summit, stop by the Ask A Jedi Cantina tonight, Friday November 18th at 9:00PM EST. We’ll be holding a live Q&A, and while we may not be able to answer everything, we’ll give it a whirl!

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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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