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.

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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!

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Posted by Lethality | 12 Comments

Game Testing To End With Dance Party Blowout!

Earlier today in Blue Milk & Cereal, we pondered if perhaps BioWare might do something special in the form of an in-game event to commemorate the completion of the Game Testing program this weekend.

Well, our answer just came in the form of a dance party, as indicated in an official forum post from Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid:

To celebrate the end of testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic, tonight at 11:30PM CST on every server, on the game’s Capital Worlds (Coruscant and Dromund Kaas), we invite everyone to a giant Star Wars dance off!

Where: On every active server – on Coruscant, in the Senate Plaza; on Dromund Kaas, within Kaas City.

When: From 11:30PM CST (9:30PM PST; 12:30AM EST; 5:30AM GMT; 6:30AM CET) until server maintenance begins (currently scheduled for 11:59PM CST). The event may be shortened depending on server performance.

Why: For fun! This is purely a social event allowing players to get together, to mix and mingle and see testing off in style. Get your /dance command ready!

Mr. Reid went on to advise that if you come to the party, you should do so as a group to ensure that you are in the same phase as your friends.

No word yet on if some ancestor of Sy Snootles will be performing live, but if you’re in Game Testing this weekend, put on your dancing shoes (social item, of course) and head on over to your capital world for what is sure to be a memorable and rockin’ good time!

Ask A Jedi will be there covering the event live, just as we do for every event that Star Wars: The Old Republic attends, so you can count on screenshots, movies and anything else we can smuggle outta there :)

 

 

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Posted by Lethality | 13 Comments

Played The Beta? Don’t Uninstall Your TOR Client!

BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid just tweeted a small – but important – FAQ for all Star Wars: The Old Republic players who participated in the most recent big beta weekend:

@Rockjaw – FAQ: if you played this weekend you do NOT need to uninstall the #SWTOR client. We are planning to patch it to Early Game Access / Live.

So save yourself another 30GB or so of downloading, and keep your files – you’ll be able to patch up to live and jump into the game as soon as the servers light up!

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Posted by Cormeister | 1 Comment

Yellow Posts: Keybinds, Lightsabers, And Community Updates

For those of you who did not get into the beta, you may be curious to know if you will be able to re-map key bindings to your desired configuration. Forum user Boozefish was curious and confused since he had heard that this feature was not available in the current beta build. He posted a thread titled, “Changing default keybinds,” to ask about it. However, Damion Schubert, Principal Lead Systems Designer, was able to step-in and let us know that key binds are able to be modified:

Keybinding is in, fear not.

Forum poster Aximand found a quote that Stephen Reid said at San Diego Comic Con when he was asked about lightsaber colors. In the thread titled “’Dozens and dozens’ of colors,” Aximand wanted to know of Mr. Reid’s quote about there being “dozens and dozens” of lightsaber color options was accurate. David Bass, Senior Community Coordinator, confirmed that yes, there are tons of colors that haven’t been discovered yet by data mining:

There are definitely still undiscovered colors out there.

Have you been planning on getting your guild into the Pre-Launch Guild Program? Well you better hurry, because sign-ups for the program end on December 2. As Associate Community Production Coordinator Courtney Woods, explains:

A few weeks ago weannounced that Phase 3 of our Pre-Launch Guild Program had begun. Phase 3: Deployment allows guild members to see whether or not their guild qualifies for transfer into the game. As we approach Early Game Access for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, we want to remind all of you in guilds that the Pre-Launch Guild Program will end on December 2nd, 11:59PM CST so that guilds can be assigned to servers for Early Game Access.

Lastly, a new associate community manager has just popped up on the scene. JovethGonzalez created his welcome post on Saturday during the crazyness of beta test weekend starting up. Since most of you were probably busy testing the game, be sure to head over to the forums and welcome our new community manager to the fray…err…community!

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