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Tag: SWTOR

  • Star Wars: The Old Republic Patch 1.3 Brings Group Finder Tomorrow

    The next major update for the Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) is coming to servers tomorrow morning, June 26. Patch 1.3 brings a feature the SWTOR community has been clamoring for since the game debuted: a group finder tool. The update also brings a host of smaller changes to the game, including new legacy perks.

    The new group finder will help players quickly find a group for Flashpoints, Operations, or Heroic planet missions. The legacy perks unlocked in the new patch include advancement perks that give experience boosts for Warzones, Flashpoints, Story Missions, and Space Missions. The crafting system has received some changes as well, with new augment kits that unlock an augment slot on already-made armor. Take a look below at all of the features announced for patch 1.3:

    Though patch 1.3 brings some needed features to SWTOR, it doesn’t bring any new content, in the form of new Operations or Warzones, the way patch 1.2 did. The free server merges that Bioware offered two weeks ago have significantly consolidated the remaining SWTOR player base, but questions remain about just how many subscribers the game still has. Back in May, when the Electronic Arts’ quarterly financial results were announced, it came out that SWTOR had lost 400,000 subscribers since its release. Though EA tried to spin this number as simply players who only played for the free month that comes with purchasing the game, anecdotal evidence suggests that since then the Diablo III launch hit SWTOR’s population hard, meaning EA will have a lot to explain in their next financial report. The massive layoffs that hit Bioware only weeks after the EA announcement were more evidence that the game was in financial trouble.

    With the group finder finally implemented, the SWTOR developers will now have to turn their attention to expanding the game’s content if they want to extend the amount of time it has before going free-to-play.

  • Star Wars: The Old Republic Down 400,000 Subscribers

    Electronic Arts’ (EA) fourth quarter fiscal year results were released yesterday, and they contained some disappointing news for EA’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. The massively multiplayer online (MMO) game now has 1.3 million subscribers, a significant drop. During EA’s last investor conference call, it was stated that the game had 1.7 million subscribers, meaning a loss of 400,000 subscribers over the past three months.

    During EA’s fiscal results conference presentation EA Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello tried to put the best spin possible on the declining subscription numbers. Riccitiello stated that the loss was due to EA counting players who had not yet used their 30-day free trial, which comes with the purchase of the game. He framed the drop as an opportunity to build subscriptions in the future. From the transcript of Riccitiello’s conference address:

    So where we are right now with Star Wars: The Old Republic is this. We’ve captured a great business. It’s the most successful MMO through this period in the history of our industry. But we are nowhere relative to sort of what the opportunity in front of us is. What happens from here are content releases every quarter, systems, and tutorials, and feature upgrades quarter to quarter and a future of expansion of content. What we tailored the game for was the core user. We tailored the game for people that have played more than one MMO and were existing MMO players.

    Riccitiello mentioned some features coming to the game that he feels will help build subscriptions. In the future, downloads of the game will be “a lot” smaller, meaning it will be easier for new players to obtain the game. Also, “buddy keys” will allow subscribers to invite friends into the game for a short trial period. This is in addition to planned quarterly content releases.

    1.3 million subscribers means The Old Republic, as Riccitiello emphasized in his address, has the second highest subscriber number for a western MMO. Also, that number of subscribers works out to around 19.5 million dollars per month that EA and Bioware, the game’s developer, are receiving from subscription payments. That amount might not be what EA investors were hoping for when news came that the had game sold over 2.4 million copies , but it should be enough to continue development of the game, whether or not subscription numbers can be increased in the future as Riccitiello hopes.

    What do you think? Was the Old Republic subscriber dip simply casuals dropping the game after their trials, or is the impending competition from Guild Wars 2 and Diablo III beginning to hit the game? Leave a comment below and let us know.

    (via Eurogamer)

  • SWTOR: The Old Republic 1.2 Update Trailer at GDC 2012

    Ugh, just when I said I was going to quit SWTOR for good and didn’t want to keep farming Ilum to make it to Battlemaster, they go and release this 1.2 Update trailer. Which looks to be making some key improvements to the game, perhaps bringing back players (like me) who were frustrated by some key omissions and faction balance issues.

    Enjoy the trailer, below I have a list of the key features presented in the trailer if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.

    – Warzone: Novare Coast

    – Operation: Explosive Conflict

    – Flashpoint: The Lost Island

    – Expanded Legacy System, and Legacy Family Tree/Powers/Species Reveal

    – UI Customization

    – Improved Character Textures

    – Deeper appearance customization

    – Warzone Rankings

    – New Corellia Daily Missions

    – New Mini-Pets

    – Guild Banks

    – New Gear

  • SWTOR: The Cold Republic Is The Ultimate Old Republic Mixtape

    Rap music and Star Wars, some could say they go together like peanut butter and Metamucil. As a fan of both (rap and Star Wars), I never once thought the two entities could co-exist. Richie Branson has proven me wrong. He’s a rap artist who just so happens to have a love for The Old Republic; sounds like we’d get along.

    He announced today the release of his mixtape, titled: ‘The Cold Republic: Episode 1 – The Empire Likes Rap‘. You can download it for free here.

    Here’s a track list for the mixtape:

    The Cold Republic

    Here are some samples of Branson’s work.

    This song has to be my favorite, as it is definitely a hassle to look for a group when you’re DPS (Scoundrel user here). For Branson, he’s a Sith Assassin…

    Here’s ‘Jedi Nights’, with in-game recordings….

    and, the album titled song ‘The Cold Republic’…

    He doesn’t have a video up for the song, but when you download the mixtape I highly recommend Emmitt Sith. The legendary frog-dog Huttball player. Love it.

  • SWTOR: The Old Republic Same-Sex Relationship Exclusive Conan Coverage

    MMORPG’s are unique games which allow people to develop relationships within the system, which is built upon people working together and forming guilds. In doing so, real relationships can form, with many of them being same gender. Couple this with the fact BioWare has always allowed relationships within their games, more recently allowing homosexual relationships; now, gamers are wanting to see these same-sex relationship options in SWTOR.

    The game didn’t release with these same-sex options, but BioWare has announced that the feature will be coming in a recent update. The topic has been blowing up on the official SWTOR forums, with the thread climbing to 62 pages.

    When dealing with the topic of same-sex relationships, controversy always seems to be closely behind. You’ve no need to look further than the Family Research Council, which released this statement…

    In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists! Hello, I’m Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In a galaxy not so far far away, Star Wars gamers have already gone to the dark side. The new video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, has added a special feature: gay relationships. Bioware, the company that developed the game, said it’s launching a same-sex romance component to satisfy some complaints. That surprised a lot of gamers, since Bioware had made it clear in 2009 that “gay” and “lesbian” don’t exist in the Star Wars universe. Since the announcement, homosexuals have been celebrating the news, but parents sure aren’t. On the game’s website, there are more than 300 pages of comments–a lot of them expressing anger that their kids will be exposed to this Star Warped way of thinking. You can join them by logging on and speaking up. It’s time to show companies who the Force is really with!

    — sigh —

    The hub bub has lead to the story picking up a bit on the national scene, with Conan O’Brien really digging deeper into the story. Providing exclusive coverage of these same sex relationships (by “exclusive”, I mean hilarious and having nothing to do with the game)…

  • SWTOR: BioWare Highlights Upcoming Developments In Video

    Following up their emergency patching of the SWTOR client earlier today, BioWare also has taken the time to let us know what they have in development for the future.

    They’ve released the video below, providing glimpses at features we can look forward to in the (hopefully) near future…

    Here’s a list of the key take-aways:

    – Continuation of the ‘Rise of the Rakghouls’ story.

    – On the PvP front, there’s a new warzone and ranking system in development.

    – They tease the legacy system, perhaps showing us what the legacy window will look like. I’m hoping that’s what it will look like, because it’s pretty slick. Considering Risha is randomly appearing in it, I have my doubts.

    – Guild banks are in the works.

    – UI customization is on the way. Thank you.

  • SWTOR: The Old Republic Update 1.1 Breaks Ilum, Players Rage

    Ah, the continuing drama of a MMORPG. If you’ve ever played (or developed) a MMO game, then you know how it’s a continuing struggle to balance and fix critical problems involving the game. SWTOR isn’t immune to these struggles, showcased by their first major content update – Update 1.1: Rise of the Rakghouls.

    Upon looking over their patch notes, it’s a pretty meaty update, fixing a slew of problems and adding in two big pieces of content. I can personally vouch for performance improvement, as the game ran smoother for me after the update, even with anti-aliasing turned on. However, there’s a specific aspect of the game the patch messed with that has left many players raging to the point many are unsubscribing from the game. It involves a little planet called Ilum, where players can go and engage in open world PvP for rewards.

    Rewards for fighting other player-controlled characters, what could go wrong? Well, when the game is divided into two exclusive factions (Empire and Republic), and one side has a 3-1 population ratio, many critical problems arise.

    Here’s what the game looks like to a republic player on Ilum. For those unfamiliar with the game, the red names represent enemies and green names are your allies. Looks like a barrel of monkeys, right?

    The video shows how empire players are simply camping in a republic base waiting for players to re-spawn from death to just kill them over and over. With BioWare’s latest update, the people doing the camping are actually being rewarded for their horde mentality, with “valor” which unlocks access to better equipment.

    Obviously this has left many players upset, with many taking to the official forums to vent their frustration. There are so many trying to access the site, that I’ve been looking at this waiting room image for around 15 minutes…

    SWTOR Waiting Room message

    The problem has gotten so severe that they’ve had to switch their forums to “read-only” due to the negative flack they’ve received.

    @SWTOR
    The Old Republic    The #SWTOR forums have temporarily been set to read-only mode. We apologize for any inconvenience. 43 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    It’s not as though BioWare has ignored the plights of the republic players since the update, as they announced they’ll be taking the servers down today to try and patch the game yet again to fix the problem.

    @SWTOR
    The Old Republic    All #SWTOR game servers will be offline from approx 10:15AM CST (4:15PM GMT; 5:15PM CET) for 4 hours for an important patch. 37 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    I’m at the end of the article and I still haven’t been able to log on to The Old Republic’s website. If there are any key updates made on the site I’ll update them here later. I’m guessing most of the people on there now are making “rage quitting” threads on the forums, and utilizing A LOT OF CAPITAL LETTERS.

    Though I can’t access the site, here’s what various players have tweeted in regards to Ilum…it’s not pretty.

    @Darquelaul
    Dark Lolz    Ilum is, for me, the most stupid PvP open zone in the MMO history. #SWTOR #WOW 21 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

    @atheadawn
    Will O’Reilly    @SWTOR Seriously…. server down for 4 hours because of the stupid Ilum bug? Seriously BW, test your patches before making them official. 42 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @celticthndrgld
    Jessica Cerina Kelly    @swtor #swtor Those players who exploited Ilum yesterday and today should have their accounts suspended and valor revoked. 50 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @TheOneSwanny
    Brandon Swann    @SWTOR why exactly is the valor in ilum getting nerfed? because people dont like getting camped lol? 55 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @devolore
    Josh Allen    Basically, Ilum went from “everybody gets free gear” to “one faction gets free gear”. 😐 1 day ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

  • SWTOR: Dancing Is A Crime

    There’s a new exploit in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but that’s not the news. The news is just how ridiculous it is.

    As you are likely aware, users can dance in The Old Republic by typing in ‘/getdown.’ This is used by many users to dance in public areas just like any other MMO. The difference here is that users can also use this command to interrupt any NPC action, including attacks. This becomes even more of an exploit when it stops boss enemies and their powerful attacks.

    For those curious, the exploit looks like this:

    Exploits like this are generally patched out rather quickly, but the response to this specific exploit has raised some eyebrows.

    The reaction to the exploit on the forums were just as expected from BioWare. All threads regarding the exploit were deleted and allegedly one of the users who posted the above video on the forums received this takedown notice:

    “We recently removed your thread about the /getdown video. We appreciate you trying to bring it to our attention but we do not allow the posting of potential exploits on the forums. Note this message is just to let you know and is NOT a warning against your account!”

    The authenticity of the notice can be called into question as it’s only been posted on sites like 4chan and Reddit. Speaking of Reddit, there’s a rumor going around there that BioWare is banning players who are using the exploit and stating that the ‘/getdown’ command should only be used in specially sanctioned dance zones.

    In a statement to Joystiq, BioWare said that the Reddit image was a troll posting and that it was a fake ban email. They did not, however, deny that users were getting banned or the removal of all references to the exploit on their forums.

    All we know is that BioWare is aware of the exploit, do not want it being discussed on the game’s official forums and may or may not be banning players for using it.