Posted by Cormeister | 4 Comments

Yellow Posts: A Patching-We-Will-Go!

Lots of bugs are being discussed on the forums. It seems that this week, BioWare has been doing lots of information gathering and communication about bugs and what they are doing to fix them. For instance, if you find yourself in need of doing a Repair install on the TOR game files, you will probably notice that the launcher looks like it is downloading a huge amount of data (about 12GB). Forum poster BouncerPup noticed this and wanted to know why this happened on what should have been a minor repair install. Joveth Gonzalez, Associate Online Community Manager, got an unnamed developer to post about this, which turns out to be just a display problem with the launcher:

Hi everyone, I wanted to pass along this message from one of our developers:

Many of you have expressed concern that when performing a Repair the entire game is downloaded again. While the Launcher messaging does seem to indicate this, that’s not actually what is going on.

When the Launcher detects a corrupted file, it will attempt to restore that file from Version 1. In the Launcher it will appear that, for example, all of Main Assets 1 (12GB) is being downloaded, but in actuality, only the patch files which contain the corrupted file are being downloaded. Typically, this is a single patch file. Now, that said, those files can be very large (up to 2GB), but unless a large number of files are corrupted it will not download the entire 12GB (or in the case of English/French/German Assets 1, 7GB).

For those of you who are experiencing repeated corruption of files and are not having success with Repair, we urge you to try the Launcher Troubleshooting Guide. We’ve discovered new issues (CAS Latency and memory voltage settings) that when corrected have solved the corruption issue for several users. We recognize that this continues to be a vexing issue for some of you and we are continuing to investigate, but as of yet no common thread discovered. We will report any verifiable fixes to the forums.

Thank you

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 5 Comments

Yellow Posts: Community Questions, In-Game Purchasing, Future Content, And Respecing

Forum user Spankyjnco posted a list of eight questions (expanded to ten) about various things in the game that probably a lot of players would like answered from BioWare. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, took the time to respond to all of the questions and let us know where they stand on the issues. Here are a couple highlights:

Q: Is there a plan to fix the graphic settings? Right now there is no real difference between medium/high graphics and it’s apparent that we are all stuck with the medium textures. What’s the reasoning for this, and do you guys have a fix planned?

A: It’s a bug, and we are working on rolling out a fix.

Q: A easier way to find groups. Having to spam in /1 is quite annoying to everyone in the zone, let alone those looking for a group. And noobdy seems to use that actual “Flag yourself for group” option because it’s not very successful. I would like to do flashpoints, but I’m not going to waste 30 minutes sitting in the fleet spamming /1 that I am looking for a group. Some kind of way to have a global search/group finder would be nice.

A: We’re aware of this desire, but we actually believe that finding others on the same planet as you encourages social interaction a bit more than a general ‘group finder’. We’re not saying it’ll never, ever happen but again, not high priority right now.

The post is pretty extensive, so I would encourage all of you to check it out for some valuable information.

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 1 Comment

Yellow Posts: Early Game Access, Guild Leadership, and PvP XP Exploit?

Well, it’s here. By the time you read this, launch day will be about half a day away. I am super excited! Even though I got in for some Early Game Access, it will be really great when everyone logs in to play and we can really see how this game will truly shape up.

With that being said, everyone who pre-ordered and was supposed to have early game access has been invited to play by BioWare. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manger, started this thread to explain and ask people to let him know if they were having any problems getting into the game. Have you not pre-ordered the game? Well, you are in luck! As long as you pre-order before the 20th and redeem your pre-order code on the website you will be granted early game access for the rest of the early access period:

Hey everyone,

I’m happy to announce that we have now invited everyone who has pre-ordered and redeemed their pre-order code forStar Wars: The Old Republic to Early Game Access. If you haven’t yet received an email, start the SWTOR Launcher and you should be able to get into the game.

If you still have issues, please reply in this thread and we’ll try to help you as soon as we can. We know there have been isolated issues with code redemption, and we want to help you get into the game. Please be patient as we deal with your issues as fast as possible.

Remember, you will not have been granted Early Game Access unless you have pre-ordered the game, received your pre-order code, and redeemed that code on your account.

If you have picked up a copy of the game already and did not pre-order (for example, from most European retailers), you will not be able to access the game until December 20th, but you will be able to redeem your product registration code now. This should have been explained by your retailer, and was noted on European packaging.

We’re not done with invites yet, however. There’s still time to pre-order, and if you do redeem a code before Early Game Access ends, you’ll still have time to play. After you redeem a pre-order code, we will invite you as soon as possible. We’ll be sending invites continuously from now until the end of Early Game Access.

We look forward to welcoming all of you to Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 114 Comments

Lethal Injection: No Grace Under Pressure, Despite Distant Early Warning

Lethal Injection is a regular opinion column here at Ask A Jedi. If you know Lethality, whom you may be familiar with from over on the official Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ forums, you know that he’s not afraid to share an opinion or two. Even more than that, he enjoys backing it up in the discussion that invariably follows. You can look for the same approach here in each installment of Lethal Injection, and we can’t wait to hear YOUR opinion of his opinions!

There’s usually no lack of unrest in any MMO community about one topic or another, and Star Wars: The Old Republic is no different. Whether it’s solo vs. group, PvE vs. PvP or nerf vs. buff, there’s always some type of revolution brewing.

This week’s firestorm in the TOR galaxy is all about the grace period. What is this grace period I speak of, you ask? Let me catch you up.

Saved By Grace

Typically when you buy a piece of entertainment software for your PC, it will come with a “CD Key” or “Game Code” which you need to enter while installing so you can be authenticated as having a legal copy of the game and the right to play it. With a traditional offline single player game, there is normally never a case where you have the game to install before you have the game code required to play it.

With a modern MMO it’s a little different. Since it’s an online game service, it’s more natural to expect to be able to download it ahead of time, install it and have it ready to connect and play the minute the servers “go live.” As most MMO vets will tell you, there’s nothing like that new MMO smell… logging into the game just as the servers come up when everything is new, fresh and unsullied by noobs.

The problem is that MMO publishers still like to sell you boxes. With physical media. And game codes. You still need to enter a game code/key in order to be able to play it. Fair enough, right? Well, yes and no.

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 7 Comments

Yellow Posts: Canceled Pre-Orders, Achievements, And The Beta Client

Once again, there is little to report, dear readers. With the end of the beta, the devs are in final crunch-time mode to get every last bug squashed and every feature polished.

There have been reports that Walmart has been canceling the pre-orders for some people. BioWare doesn’t know why this has been happening and will be reaching out to Walmart on Monday to try and find a solution. First posted by ppglenn, Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid responded soon thereafter to say that they are looking into the issue.

Hello everyone,

We will investigate this issue ASAP, although we may not have further details to share before Monday.

I obviously cannot speak on behalf of any retailer, however I would like to let people know who have pre-ordered and redeemed their pre-order code, that their Early Game Access is still secured. You may apply any Game Code from any edition of The Old Republic to your account.

As I said, we’ll look into this ASAP and update you when we can.

A later report by a forum member confirmed that both Collectors and Standard Editions have been canceled by the worlds largest retailer. So, if you are in the unfortunate situation of having bee notified by Walmart that your pre-order was canceled, I would stay tuned to this thread for updates.

Forum poster Ironeyes heard like the rest of us that Achievements were going to be in the game at launch. Apparently however, he could not locate them in-game as of right now (and neither could I when I tried to go look). David Bass, Senior Community Coordinator, responded to let us all know that Achievements are located in the Codex:

Achievements are indeed in the game currently. You’ll receive achievements for things like killing certain “Epic Enemies,” unlocking titles, and accomplishing objectives in PvP. These are all kept in a special category in your Codex, so that you can view how you earned each one at any time.

Last up, forum poster Gordknight wanted to know if his beta test client that has been installed for a while would need to be uninstalled to make way for the retail client. Once again, David Bass responded to let us know that more information was forthcoming:

Don’t uninstall yet. We’ll have more info soon about the testing game client vs. the live client.

This was an interesting statement since we already have this from Stephen Reid that specifically says not to uninstall the beta client because it will patch up all the way to the retail version. I guess we will just have to wait for more info to be sure!

Read More