Posted by Momus | 10 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: Buff Slicing

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

This article was supposed to be about how overpowered Slicing was, and also how good it was for the economy and crafters in general. It was also supposed to be posted last week.

Unfortunately, BioWare decided to read my mind during Beta and nerf it now. Now, after release, when the window for reducing it in a way that didn’t harm the economy has ended, they did nerf it. However, the nerf is not as bad as you would think. What the nerf does is remove the incentive to send companions on missions and return almost twice the cost in profit, which is a change I think they should have made one month ago.

However, the gathering aspect remains intact as a solid source of income while leveling. It’s not as much, but you can still gather lockboxes with great returns in addition to quests. The major part of this nerf really hurts the PvP community, which now relies solely on the credits from winning or losing a match to make any money. They can no longer rely on sending their companions to do Slicing missions to make them rich.

And I’m fine with that. Except that now, Slicing, instead of having a good amount of people doing it, is being abandoned faster than Google+. All the people who picked up the profession to make quick bucks are now going back to actual gathering professions. There will actually be fewer slicers than if the change had been made in the General Beta Test, which is going to have an adverse effect on the in-game economy.

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Posted by Momus | 2 Comments

Collector’s Edition Vendor Items Revealed! (Empire)

Happy Launch Day, TOR fans! As many of you are just receiving your Collector’s Editions via the archaic physical delivery system, we have for you a list of the things available for purchase just for you! These are the Imperial versions of the items. The Republic has a different set of items that we will post soon.

The vendor is located on top of the central cantina in the respective fleet stations. To get there, there’s an elevator that will deny you access if you do not have the VIP Lounge Wristband in your inventory – like a mean bouncer, the elevator puts you right out!

Should you have the necessary access, then you will be able to ride up and see a gentleman (gentle-Ithorian?) named Nongta who will sell you various Prototype and Custom items. His current inventory is as follows:

• Imperial Trooper Boots
• Imperial Trooper Gloves
• Imperial Trooper Helmet
• Imperial Trooper Jacket
• Imperial Trooper Pants
• Hutt Observer
• Kaliyo Djannis Customization 5
• Khem Val Customization 12
• Khem Val Customization 2
• Khem Val Customization 7
• Mako Customization 7
• Vette Customization 6

In addition, there is another vendor available to anyone who makes it to the VIP Lounge who sells a vehicle (different name but available to both sides) for 1.5 million credits. That’s 2.5 million if you have the standard edition, essentially (1 million for the wristband and another 1.5 million for the vehicle).

Better get to farming those credits! No better place to start that right here on Ask A Jedi in Blasters, Beggars & Credits!

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Posted by Momus | 15 Comments

Yellow Posts: No Server Forums (For Now)

Happy TOR Launch Eve, everyone. Some might consider it coal, but BioWare gave us something on the day before Launch – Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman’s explanation of why there are no server-specific forums currently.

Hi everyone! We wanted to explain a little more about why there aren’t currently server forums:

While we absolutely agree that there are some useful threads and discussions that come from server forums, we have decided to not include them in our launch Forums lineup. Partially, this is because we do not feel we could currently provide the high standard of moderation, oversight, and maintenance in each of them that we aim to provide across the Forums.

Another factor is that, after observing server forums for other games, we feel that we can provide places on the Forums for the constructive content that typically comes from them while working to eliminate the extreme negativity of player callouts and other undesirable forum activity that can occur in them.

We now have several areas for guild recruitment and community discussion and organization, which we feel are excellent things that typically end up in server-specific forums. We encourage you to make use of all the Community Forums (especially the Server Event and Check-ins forums) as well as our expanded Guild Hall forums. Though the search feature is currently disabled, once it is restored it will be easy to search for guilds recruiting on your server (and we apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime).

Obviously, this is a decision we can re-evaluate as we receive community feedback, but we do encourage you to try out the sub-forums that we currently have to see if they meet your needs and desires for meeting other players. In the future, we may add additional sub-forums for various topics that require more space. We’re always reading feedback and evaluating the needs of the community, and will continue to do so, so please do let us know what suggestions you have to improve the Forums!

Obviously, this could be a hot topic for many community members – how do you all feel about this? Is BioWare making the right decision?

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Posted by Momus | 8 Comments

Blasters, Beggars & Credits: Money Matters

Some players do it for glory. Some do it for infamy. Some like to accumulate the most points, or explore the far reaches of the worlds they inhabit. This, however, is not a column for those people. This is a column for those people who, quietly or not, enjoy making money so that their digital avatar can sleep on large piles of cash.

Some people probably read my little columns (absent for a time, and for that I apologize) and snicker to themselves – “What a sucker, he’s revealing his strategy to everyone!”

Well, not really. Due to circumstances, I have been unable to play straight through the last two days, so I’m neither very advanced in level (hit 22 late last night) or in money (I’ve peaked at around 30k before training costs hit). But there is a plan.

They Drew First Blood

Every day we get a new amount of players crowding the scene, a new wave of people getting into the game. And these people are, in general, going to be less hardcore about news, and blogs, and fan sites – and very unlikely to read any column of mine. Much to their sorrow!

I periodically have been checking back at the GTN, and later I’m going to give a small tutorial. But for now, for those avid money-makers, here is what I am doing to amass a small fortune before advancing too far in level.

Flipping has been working quite well for me. Many people are posting things for ludicrously small amounts of credits. For instance – someone put 6 Red Amorphous Crystals on the GTN for 10 credits each. I turned those around for 75 credits a piece – that’s a 650% ROI. Every day I check the Archaeology tab, and every day I’m amazed to find stuff for under 40 credits.

Remember folks: 10 credits is nothing. It’s not worth auctioning something for that much. I turned 30 credits into 450 without so much as batting an eye.

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Posted by Momus | 5 Comments

Drs. Muzyka And Zeschuk Announce A 48-Hour Grace Period!

TOR fans, rejoice! Your pleas did not go unheard. A 48-hour grace period, ending on December 22nd at 12:01AM EST, has just been announced!

Hello everyone,

While we’ve worked closely with our retailers in the launch territories to ensure copies of Star Wars: The Old Republic are available from our launch date of December 20th, we understand that for those of you who’ve pre-ordered, there may be a concern about getting your copy on time. We’ve heard you want a ‘grace period’ where you can continue to play without having to enter a final product registration code (AKA ‘game code’).

We’ve been listening, and after doing another deep review of our platform infrastructure, we’re taking action. Today, we’re announcing a two day grace period for Star Wars: The Old Republic customers.

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