Posted by Lethality | 8 Comments

FSS 2011: Hands-On the Alderaan Civil War Warzone; Marauder & Gunslinger

Let me start out by saying this right away: I’m not an organized PvPer. I love open-world, chance encounters however I rarely participate in structured matches of any kind. So I don’t find it necessary to work on specializing my gear or character build for this purpose.

With that said, after having gotten my first taste of PvP in Star Wars: The Old Republic, I can’t wait to dive into it when the live game finally comes launches.

It could just be the fact that its freaking’ Star Wars, and there are lightsabers swinging and blaster bolts firing in all directions. Or maybe it’s the fact that it felt so different from what I’ve experienced in the past. This wasn’t one-shot, stun-lock bunny-hop combat. There was strategy you could use and tactics you could apply. And the fights lasted longer than 30 seconds!

Read on to find out why I might be spending a lot more time PvPing when TOR finally ships.

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Posted by Jesta | 8 Comments

HoT Smuggling Scoundrels…

An introduction to Healing Smugglers

When Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ was first announced, I was really confused as to where all the healers were. You had gun-toting Smugglers, armor-clad Troopers, powerful Jedi Knights and the likely suspect, the wizard-like Jedi Consulars. Really, I didn’t know where the healing was going to fall, who would be able to do it, and how they would pull off a ‘healing’ role for some of the classes without giving them some sort of magical powers. This was back in late 2009 when I first started following the news on the game regularly, and since then, we’ve been slowly learning how each class approaches the roles they will be able to tackle.

Now that we’ve gotten a bit more information and have been able to watch through the Taral V Developer Walkthrough, the Smuggler’s healing abilities have been de-mystified, slightly… Throughout this post, we will journey through the game mechanics that the video highlights and the information we’ve learned from PAX East 2011. Continue on to learn more!

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Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

Friday Update: Designing the Advanced Classes System

Today’s official Friday update was a brand new developer blog written by BioWare Principal Lead Systems Designer Georg Zoeller… In the piece, Georg provides some juicy, long-awaited details on the design of the Advanced Class system:

In some cases, this led to integrating ‘traditional’ MMO roles into our existing class structures: The play style generally associated with the ‘healer’ role in MMOs is very popular with many players and we wanted to make sure that we offered that role in our game for our audience. In fact, we are offering two classes that can develop into fully capable healers for each faction via one of their Advanced Classes.

While the blog entry provides a slightly more clear picture of how Advanced Classes play a role, there are still questions left with answers unconfirmed:

• Is your Advanced Class choice permanent? We’ve heard yes and maybe.
• Can you fill more than one combat role with your Advanced class? We’ve heard no.
• What level do you choose your Advanced Class? We’ve heard it’s not level dependent.

In any case, the blog is a must-read for any fan who is closely following TOR, especially those of my Smuggler brethren, because the Smuggler class is used as the example throughout the post!

With “trees” within the Advanced Class such as Scrapper, Sawbones, Sharpshooter and Dirty Fighting, with a shared tree of Luck, the Smuggler class is shaping up to be just what I was hoping.

We also hope that this developer blog might signal the beginning of more game systems-related information releases. Long overdue in this author’s opinion.

Click here to read the full blog post, and don’t forget to follow our coverage all next week of the GDC Online conference in Austin, Texas… where you can be sure we might use a few Dirty Tricks to get some more info out of BioWare!

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Posted by Lethality | 1 Comment

Friday Update: Smuggler Holonet + Blood of The Empire #12

The Friday update is indeed arrived! And for yours truly, it’s the best one yet!

Today, BioWare has updated the official Star Wars: The Old Republic site with the full-on Holonet update for the Smuggler class! Not only do we get a revamped page, but we also find out about his ship, his first companion Bowdaar the wookiee and more!

Head on over to the official Smuggler page for all of the shady details!

Also this week, we’re treated to the finale of the latest web comic – Blood of the Empire #12. Suffice it to say, Teneb Kel reaffirms his “Sithiness”.

And as always, don’t forget to check out Darth Hater for their dissection and Aurebesh translations!

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Posted by Sentinel | 0 Comments

New Smuggler Class Trailer Revealed!

Machinima.com has scored an exclusive reveal of the new Smuggler class intro video. It’s in the same vein as the previously released Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight trailers. Presumably these might be similar to what are used in-game to describe an overview of the class to players:

Perhaps this means we’ll see an updated Smuggler class page as part of the update this Friday?

Below you can see a few interesting screen grabs, including a Wookiee companion walloping an enemy and sending him flying through the air, as well as the Smuggler himself in Stealth.

Also, Darth Hater has a dissection going as to the specific details!

Thanks to taekwondoboy for the find!

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