Posted by Lethality | 26 Comments

Next Beta Weekend: November 25-28 – As Open As It Gets

Although not yet otherwise formally announced, BioWare has dropped a pretty strong hint on Twitter as to when the next Beta Weekend will happen:

@SWTOR:  We are targeting November 25-28 for our upcoming #SWTOR Beta Testing Weekend. Get a code via http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20111111-0

Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid followed up with some more clarification:

@Rockjaw: Everyone who signed up for #SWTOR testing (yes – everyone), including those redeeming keys from our partners, will get invited next week.

Yes, this is the big “everyone’s invited” weekend! If you were already signed up on SWTOR.com before November 11th, 2011, you will be invited. For those of you who weren’t, you just need to follow this link and grab a beta code from your favorite gaming site!

Here in the US, it’s Thanksgiving weekend which means many people will have extra time off to play. On the other hand, many folks will be traveling and/or have plans to spend time with family, so it could be a mixed blessing. Will you be able to spend time in what will be the biggest TOR test yet?

The countdown is on, my friends!

 

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 2 Comments

European Fan Site Summit Up Next!

The Fan Site Summit World Tour continues, next stop: Ireland!

@Rockjaw – Right – off to salvage a chunk of the day before @doctordake and I leap on a plane to Ireland for EU #SWTOUR !

Last week during the Fan Site Summit at BioWare’s Austin studio, we learned that they were planning a similar event the following week for some European fan sites in the new BioWare Galway location. Last April for the first Fan Site Summit, some of those sites came to Austin but this is great news for European fans, as it would seem to allow more regional sites to be involved and much easier on the jet lag for the sites that need to travel!

The list of sites is not yet announced, but we should be hearing from them pretty soon, and we’ll keep this post up-to-date with all of the info you need to follow them!

The good news is that we still have a lot more to talk about from the Summit, and you won’t want to miss it! Stay tuned!

Visite guidée des locaux de Bioware en Irlande by Chimaera-SWTOR

 

Read More

Posted by Cormeister | 4 Comments

Yellow Posts: Darkside Disfigurement and Tanking

Every week in Yellow Posts, we dive head-first into the depths of the Dev Tracker for you and eek out every tasty developer morsel worthy of your eyeballs. If you’ve missed anything, this is the place to catch up!

This was a pretty slow week for developer posts so I’m going to dip a little bit into last week. I am really looking forward to my Dark side character getting disfigured and misshapen the further he falls to the Dark side. But some people my not share my enthusiasm for a Palpatine-esc visage. Never fear, BioWare has included a feature to toggle off the grissly appearance should you desire. As Georg Zoeller, Principal Lead Combat Designer, explains:

Like ‘Hide head slot’ or ‘Unify colors to chestpiece,’ this is a game option, on by default, which can be toggled on a per character basis.

Forum poster torsjn started a thread titled “I *Really* Hope SR Misspoke Here :(” about something that Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, said at New York Comic Con.  Basically he said that the Shadow/Assassin ACs are off-tanks which was a departure from what we had heard before regarding tanking in SW:TOR. Torsin was understandably confused, and Georg Zoeller provided clarification on Mr. Reid’s remarks:

Nope.

By design, all tank capable ACs can spec to be fully capable main tanks.

There are no ‘off tanks’ unless you intentionally spend your skill points into different trees.

So, no need to worry, every class can main tank unless the player chooses talents specifically to off-tank. Stephen Reid also clarified his statements a little bit later:

As you’ll see from Georg’s latest posts, I did mis-speak. My tanking experience is limited (in MMOs generally; as I said in the interview, I’m a DPS lad) and I did point that out in the interview.

I think my confusion came from playing a Sith Assassin in our Eternity Vault demo many, many times, who was specced to be an off-tank, not main tank. However, as Georg has now corrected me on, that’s not a limitation of the AC, it’s a choice on the part of the player.

Sorry if I confused everyone for a minute. This is what happens when you ask questions of the Community Manager that are better suited to the development team. It’s not their fault that they can’t make it to every show, we want to keep them hard at work on the game. 

Apparently, Amazon.de reported (for a time) that the release date was sometime in April 2012. Jasdemi got an email from them saying that the release date had changed which was quite strange, he though. So it took to the forums and asked about it. Stephen Reid responded, saying that this was just an error in Amazon.de’s system:

…our release date has not changed.

According to our investigation there was some confusion between Amazon.de’s warehouse and the main site, hence the update.

Nothing’s changed regarding our release date. To ease confusion and to ensure this is the last message anyone sees in this thread, I’m closing this now.

Until next week, keep the yellow text flowing.

Read More

Posted by Momus | 7 Comments

Press Embargo Drops Tomorrow

IGN has posted an article that many readers here will appreciate:

IGN has been tooling around in the Old Republic beta for the last week or two, and we’re just about ready to spew forth (in the best way possible) a whole heap of information. Tomorrow at 9 AM Pacific you can look forward to a pile of new content. Then starting Monday (the 24th) and lasting through to Friday (the 28th) we’ll be posting a brand new Old Republic article every. Single. Day.

If you pay attention to the Developer Twitter feed (just to the right of the first article on the site), you have probably seen these Steven Reid’s warnings already, but in the interest of presenting the information in one place, here are the relevant tweets:

@Rockjaw As others have noted, we have a press embargo on #SWTOR dropping tomorrow. We’ve had press in for a while. Testers are still under NDA.

@Rockjaw That means if you’re in testing, you’re still bound by NDA. Only press who have been admitted will be sharing their impressions.

@Rockjaw Watch the @SWTOR account for retweets of coverage btw.

@Rockjaw Simple rule on press embargoes: unless you’ve been told you’re under embargo, you’re a tester. Ergo, no, you can’t talk about the game.

 

To wit: starting tomorrow, press entities that have been in the game (such as IGN, Buffed.de, etc) and testing will be allowed to cover the game free of any binding contracts. Next week, the 24th – 28th, IGN will be covering SW:TOR with a new article daily, so pay special attention there.

However, if you are currently in testing (or did the weekend tests), this means nothing for you; you are still under the NDA. Do not violate this! Reid has made it clear that you will face his wrath should you dare tread those waters.

Unfortunately, Ask A Jedi and other fan sites aren’t categorized as “press” so we won’t have anything to share but enthusiasm, and coverage of the coverage! But, just maybe, that will change soon ;)

Read More

Posted by Lethality | 0 Comments

NYCC: Stephen Reid Interview With TORWars

Doing all the dirty work in New York this week, the TORWars cartel managed to snag an interview with BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid. The guys discuss species, racial abilities, launch dates and Operations with Mr. Reid and although they tried, they just couldn’t get more on the Hutt operation out of him!

But perhaps most of all, it’s exciting to see Jeff’s Yoda microphone back in action! /cheer!

 

Read More