Posted by Lethality | 41 Comments

Important News About Ask A Jedi: The Sith Did It!

Although I knew the day to write this post would come, I didn’t expect it to sneak up on me so quickly!

Recently, my personal and professional life has gotten more demanding on several fronts, and I found that I was struggling to put the time into Ask A Jedi that it needed and deserved. Unfortunately I just could not work it out to my satisfaction, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. So,  rather than letting Ask A Jedi wither and die on the vine, I decided to stop publishing the site all together as of today, March 19, 2012.

I understand that this might come as a shock to some fans, as we remain one of the largest and longest-running Star Wars: The Old Republic fan sites. This wasn’t an easy decision in the first place, and that’s entirely due to all of the members of the AAJ Army! We’ve grown quite a community over the 2 years we’ve been doing this, and many of the friends I made extend outside of the game.

Turn The Page

So what’s next? Glad you asked!

I’ve become really good buds with the guys over at TORWars during our incessant chase of TOR during it’s development. If for some reason you’ve never visited TORWars.com before, you should be ashamed. It is easily the highest-quality, most professionally written Star Wars: The Old Republic site out there. Thanks to Jeff and Co. over there, I’ll be a guest poster and editor on TORWars from time to time going forward, which will give me an opportunity to stay involved with the community at the same time dealing with the increased workload at work. I can’t thank Jeff enough for this opportunity, and want everyone in the AAJ Army to now consider themselves TOR Warriors and make themselves at home over there!

A Million Thanks

I’d like to thank BioWare, LucasArts and Electronic Arts on the behalf of Ask A Jedi, all of our staff, and myself for all of the support and generosity they’ve shown us over the years. The incredible accessibility to developers, gameplay at conventions and not to mention being invited to Austin on several occasions made the dream possible. The dynamic duo of David Bass and Stephen Reid are easily the best 1-2 punch in community management in the games industry. I’d call them Batman and Robin except I think Stephen’s more of a Marvel guy. I can’t call out everyone else on the community teams and the development teams by name, but suffice it to so I was blown away time and time again how nice and accommodating everyone was. And on the several occasions I got to meet and chat with BioWare co-founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, they inspired me to be better at what I did and to never let go of your dream! Doctors – thank you.

I’d also like to thank the AAJ staff… Momus, Zlatto, Kray, Lady Republic, Reedyn, Cormeister, Professor Walsh, Lord Paladin, Twin Hits, Sa’Chi, Cealog, ReDDoT as well as all previous staffers and contributors for helping to make Ask A Jedi what it is today, and that is nothing less than a top-quality narrative-driven fan site. I owe all of you big time.

And last but definitely not least, I want to thank you, the readers – the AAJ Army! I never in a million years that I’d be able to start some blog and have several hundred thousand visitors read it every month. Meeting many of you either virtually or physically has made this one of the more rewarding things I’ve done.

Please let me know if you have any question or concern about any of this in the comments below… and please visit TORWars.com every day for all of your TOR needs, including class guides, videos, opinons and more… and as I mentioned, I’ll even show up there from time to time so come and flame be over there instead! :)

May the Force be with you. Always.

– Bill
(Lethality)

 

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Posted by Lethality | 7 Comments

Patch Notes: 1.1.5 – Roll Away! Plus, Performance Improvements

Today, BioWare pushed Patch 1.1.5 to the live servers, bringing many welcome fixes to players of Star Wars: The Old Republic. While it may pale compared to the shiny that is Patch 1.2 as detailed during the Guild Summit, it’a great to see constant forward movement on a weekly basis from the gang in Austin!

You can find these as well as all previous patch notes at BioWare’s official Patch Notes page on SWTOR.com

Patch Notes – 1.1.5 – 3/6/2012

General

• Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6).

Classes and Combat

General

• Moving while channeling an ability (such as Telekinetic Throw and Force Lightning) will no longer cancel the Global Cooldown, which would allow those abilities to deal more damage than intended.

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Posted by Lethality | 42 Comments

Lethal Injection: We Need Factions

I originally posted this on the official TOR forums to try and get some discussion going there, but it was swiftly and unceremoniously moved to the Suggestion Box, otherwise known as where discussions go to die. So, since I had a blog that talks about Star Wars: The Old Republic, I decided it was a great place to put it after all! :)

TL;DR

Here’s the basic gist of it, so those of you that wish to flame me can get right to it:

Adding NPC factions to the game and allowing a progression mechanic for them through reputation would allow BioWare to tell stories about more and varied parts and peoples of the Star Wars galaxy. This would also assure that players with “nothing to do” would always have something to do.

With that out of the way, onward!

The Problem

One of the louder cries over on the official forums from the people that have already advanced to level cap is that there’s “nothing to do.”

There is some truth to this. Leveling is as quick as in any game, if not quicker. Normal mode Operations are designed to be very easy, and reward nearly the same gear as Heroic mode. So it’s very easy to be geared up completely in no time at all. At that point, there really isn’t much left to do.

You could roll an alt, but that has nothing to do with progressing your main character. Until we know more about the Legacy system (which is designed to incentivize rolling alts) we can’t say what else that will bring.

Of course you could also play Warzones and spend time on Ilum, which is probably the only real option at end game that doesn’t run out (unless of course you max out your PvP gear and Valor rank). But you could still PvP for fun, which it is.

The Solution

So what, then, could players in this position of having nothing to do spend their time doing? The answer is Factions.

Traditionally, MMOs have had various NPC factions scattered throughout the world. TOR is no different, actually. The key difference between TOR and some other games such as World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard and even RIFT is that these factions exist as a game construct that you can earn (or lose) reputation with. In other words, the game measure your interaction with these factions and provides potential rewards (items, areas, content, lore, etc.)

Back at PAX 2011, I asked Gabe Amatangelo and James Ohlen if TOR would have any of these factions and they said no. However, it looks to me as if it may have been a part of TOR’s original design, as you can see here on the Allegiances page of the HoloNet:

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Posted by Lethality | 21 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Do Credits Matter?

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!

We’re back! At least temporarily… still trying to get a solid, consistent writer to handle the BM&C duties, so if you have any ideas for discussion topics, let us know!

The recent Public Test Server patch notes for patch 1.1.5 that indicated that speeders will have their priced reduced until patch 1.2. Now, there are no more details than that right now, and I can’t imagine the thinking behind that. Will they go back up in price in 1.2?

At any rate, I posed this very question on the PTS forum and once of the responses was from a player that said he had so many credits, he could afford anything they put up. This got me to thinking… do credits even matter anymore? It seems that most players who simply play the game have more than enough credits to do whatever they need to that the game lays out for them. In a way, your “credit counter” is just another progress bar. Not very interesting.

And honestly, I’m not just picking on TOR here. Most MMOs, including World of Warcraft, have devalued in-game currency so much that it has lost nearly all meaning. Some of this is due to the constant fight between gold farmers and RMT. There are all kinds of special currencies, badges, tokens and whatnot that replace the “money” in the game to assure the player is the one doing the content and earning the reward.

I miss the old days. When money was money and it was a way to buy whatever you wanted! And even then, I don’t think games should automatically fill your “money progress bar” so that you can have everything… you should have to work a bit and save – just like in real life – to achieve certain things.

What’s the solutoin? I don’t know… is it soulbound currency that you could only spend with NPCs and the Auction House/GTN? Maybe. But it just feels like we’ve lost our way (and the battle) when we’re looking for ways to replace currency with… other types of currency. What are your thoughts?

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Posted by Lethality | 9 Comments

Patch Notes: 1.1.5 – Public Test Server – I’m Rollin’!

Today, BioWare rolled out a brand new build of Star Wars: The Old Republic to the Public Test Server. Patch 1.1.5 is now available for players to test and the notes are available below, or here.

Items of note are the addition of a /roll command as well as a fix to the Master Looter function. Also interesting is the reduction in price of several speeder models “until patch 1.2”. Hmm.

No word on character copy yet, which is truly required for the PTS to be of any real value (at least to players.)

Anyway, you can get more details from the official Test Center including instructions on how to participate. And don’t forget to head over to the official Public Test Server forums to give BioWare your feedback when you do!

Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ — 1.1.5 Patch Notes

Because development is ongoing during testing, it should be noted that all changes and updates listed in the patch notes should be considered incomplete and are subject to change or removal before release to the live servers. The Public Test Server patch notes will be provided in English. The final release notes will be provided in English, French, and German when the content is moved to live servers.

General

• Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6).

Classes and Combat

Sith Warrior

• The French version of the “Darth” title is now correct.

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