Posted by TwinHits | 0 Comments

United We Stand: Happiness Is Anyone Or Anything At All

United We Stand is an Ask A Jedi series focusing on guilds, groups, and other communities in Star Wars: The Old Republic. By examining the communities that we form, we can create a stronger game for ourselves, build relationships that will last a lifetime, and perhaps even change the world itself.

Happy New Years! I’ve decided my new year’s resolution is to become friends with all the other level 50’s on server.

Yeah, I know that’s ambitious and kind of ridiculous, but right now it’s not that hard because there’s only like fifty of us (even so, I’d say I’m only friends with about fifteen). But for me the point is the effort and the progress that I will make along the way, the people that I will meet, the experiences that I will have, and the joys that we will be able to create for each other.

This is really what brings us back to the point of online gaming: the people that we meet here are what make the game real and important. I think particularly at the beginning of a game’s life, a.k.a. the last few weeks for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is especially clear. Less people, less content, a less clear understanding of the game all make it more important that we meet others and build community.

Several nights ago I had my first TOR raiding experience. We went into Eternity Vault and Kragga’s Palace and cleared them both on normal. While half of this example is just to brag, the other half is to serve as an illustration about how important to is to build relationships with other people on one’s server. As much as I would like for this to be an accomplishment of my guild, it wasn’t.

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Posted by Lethality | 10 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: Are You Excited For A Hutt-based Operation?

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!

BioWare has been showing off the Eternity Vault – the first Operation (raid) in Star Wars: The Old Republic – for some time now, and it looks amazing. It seems to have all of the gameplay and teamwork that you’d expect from  high-level end-game PvE content. You can check out a 10-minute walkthrough of the first boss with BioWare’s Dallas Dickinson right here!

Of course, just one Operation wouldn’t be the beginning and the end of it. We knew that BioWare would have more raid content available to players at some point. Recently, they began teasing the idea of a new Operation, this time involving the Hutts. As a matter of fact, you can see the tease on the recently revealed Operations game systems page over at SWTOR.com

The shadowy image of peering through a grate into an unknown Hutt’s inner-sanctum certainly paints a picture for what we might expect! Now, I may not know everything about Star Wars lore, but I can’t recall a Hutt being very agile – or even just mobile. It will be interesting to see what a raid inside of a Hutt palace might look like!

So, are you excited at the possibilities for a Hutt-based raid? Why or why not? Perhaps you have an idea for a different raid setting entirely! Let us know!

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Posted by Lethality | 12 Comments

Blue Milk & Cereal: What Did You Think Of The Eternity Vault?

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!

Yesterday during the Electronic Arts press conference, the Star Wars: The Old Republic portion was dedicated primarily to talking about and showing off end-game information.

Dr. Ray Muzyka was on hand to introduce Lead End-game Designer Gabe Amatangelo, who narrated a live demo of 8 BioWare staffers tried to guide an Imperial team through the first encounters of the Eternity Vault Operation. Wether they were successful or not is of some debate this morning ;)

None the less, we got to see some pretty intense action, in fact the first live raid gameplay ever for the public. After the live gameplay ended, Gabe introduced a short pre-recorded gameplay video from further into the Eternity Vault. In this clip, we got to see some different areas, creatures, and what appeared to be some sort of puzzle mechanic.

In my opinion, everything we saw added to my confidence that BioWare is going to deliver an end-game worthy of seasoned MMO players.

But what did you guys think? Was there anything you saw that was cool? Did anything come across as boring or silly? Let us know!

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