SWTOR Info

[Kamchak]

For everyone that purchased SWTOR, Id like some feedback... would you purchase it again having played it?
I'll need to buy a HD and the game itself in order to play it. Its a lot of money for a game Im not sure about.

Thanks for any replies.

[cabby]

Kam, if you like any kind of a good story line as part of your leveling experience buy SWTOR. Yeah, the game has some bugs to be worked out but what game doesn't when it's first released these days? The questing is so much different compared to WoW with the voice acting, cut scenes, etc. that it just sucks you in and you lose all track of time. I would definitely buy it again, altho at this point I'm not sure if I'd buy the CE again. The in game CE vendors currently don't have a whole lot to offer and that's the primary reason why I got it. Maybe in a few months they'll add more items to the CE vendors to make it worth it but right now with what's available on them I just don't see the value in the extra money spent for the CE version.

Try checking out some of the different twitch.tv or youtube videos for the game. You should be able to get a good idea of what I mean about the questing aspects and maybe even get an idea of the different classes.

[chaos5061]

Kam I agree with cabby. The best thing about the game to me is the story. The story draws you in and makes you feel apart of the universe. WoW has you do thing but never makes you fell like you did something in the end. Like the Lich King. The official story ending is that a group of adventures killed him but not you personally. With SWTOR when you do something you personally did it. Right now you might not see much since the game is just released but in expansions I expect the NPCs will actually know your character and what you did for them if you run into them again and they have something for you to do in the new expansion. Also you get mail in the mailbox from NPCs you interact with. Like one quest I know of and have seen both sides to. A lady wants you to steal some research on something so she can make some credits and get away from the big boss that is treating her like a slave. When you go to steal it the inventor talks to you through hologram and pleads you not to steal it because what the data is that it will make cyborg parts that regenerate. He wants to help the world with them and the lady want to sell the on the black market to make money. Whoever you help changes the mail you get after a while has passed in the game. You help the inventor and them email gives you some credits and explains what happened to the woman because you actually gave her false data and the people she was selling it to was very unhappy with her. You help the woman and she sends you a email thanking you again for the help and practically gushing about the credits she made from the sale and you get some credits from that mail. Other quest will send you mail and it's not always credits sometimes you get a medpac which is what you use to heal yourself in combat or a stim which increases a stat for a short time.

[chaos5061]

Public Test Notes 1.0.2

From Bioware:
1.0.2 Patch Notes

General

Guilds that are currently leaderless will have an Officer chosen and promoted to Guild Leader.


Classes and Combat


Sith Inquisitor


General

The Darth title is now properly granted to Sith Inquisitors.

Bug Fixes

Corrected an issue that could prevent players from taking cover when targeting large NPCs.
Fixed a bug that caused some abilities with activation times to be interrupted when used from cover.


Flashpoints and Operations


Flashpoints


Taral V

General Edikar now has the correct loot in Hard Mode and no longer enrages in Normal Mode.

Operations


Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that could cause choosing Nightmare Mode to not set enemies to Nightmare difficulty.


Items


General

PvP lockboxes now cost 70 commendations, contain more consumables, and always contain an item.

Bug Fixes

Corrected several PvP items that were Bind on Equip. They are now Bind on Pickup.
PvP vendors on Capital Planets now offer the correct PvP items.
Commendations received via in-game mail are now correctly added to the Currency tab.


Missions and NPCs


Missions


Imperial

Number One with a Bullet: Players who choose dark side options now correctly receive the mission First Strike after completing this mission.
First Strike: Players who did not receive this mission will now receive it upon entering their personal starships.

Republic

Death Cloud: Players can now complete the "Toxic Waste" bonus objective regardless of how quickly they complete this mission.

Bug Fixes

Corrected mission steps on several planets that could cause client instability.
Fixed issues with some missions that could prevent pending rewards from being accepted.


Space Combat


Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue that caused a client crash if a space station was destroyed in Space Combat.


UI


Maps

Group members no longer appear on all planets on the Galaxy Map.
Corrected an issue that could cause map notes to disappear after logging out and back into the game.
Corrected some map notes that referenced the incorrect map.
Updated map notes for "travel to planet" steps in class missions on Nar Shaddaa, Hoth, and Belsavis to indicate the planet's space station.

Bug Fixes

Players now receive the appropriate message if they attempt to create more characters than are permitted per account.
Group members outside of a player's phase are no longer prompted to roll on items.
The In-Game Customer Service Portal no longer appears to hang while the "updating" message is displayed.
The Guild interface now properly displays the guild member list when it is sorted.
The "Show Sith Corruption" option no longer toggles off when transitioning between areas.


Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

Taxi rides are no longer occasionally interrupted, causing the player to be dropped from the taxi.
Using the /dismiss command now correctly dismisses a vanity pet.
Corrected some issues that could cause players to become stuck on the loading screen when logging into a character.
Players can now use emotes while riding a vehicle.
Fixed a bug that prevented some text-only mail messages from being received.
Graphics preferences in settings files are now consistent with actual settings in use.
Being in Do Not Disturb mode no longer prevents characters from being logged out for being away.
Corrected an issue that caused poor performance on some machines in indoor areas with shadows enabled.
Fixed an issue that could prevent players from being logged out for inactivity.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for eight hours on January 4th, 2012 from 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET. All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours, but could be extended.

Generally speaking we are aiming to limit our scheduled maintenance period to once a week, on Tuesdays. However, this week we will perform maintenance on Wednesday due to the New Year’s holiday. We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players. We are also aiming to inform players of the precise duration of any weekly maintenance period at least 24 hours before the maintenance begins.

For our new players, this weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will a patch to download. Please be sure to update your launcher after any maintenance period.


Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET)

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours.


Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

[dudedafool]

Have to agree with Cabby and Chaos.

I'm only level 17 at the moment, however, I'm having a blast!

The story is what is keeping me addicted to the game at the moment. If you want to play the game to listen to the story, then, this is the game for you.

Highly recommended.
Only problems so far, combat bugs, skill delay, from what I have read there is a major lack of content at level 50 (Obviously they should fix it over time.)
However, as a MAJOR fan of KOTOR (Which I still play to this day on steam) this is such a kick ass game.

If you do play, you could always roll with me, or, one of the others. I know we'd all be willing to help.

[dudedafool]

Just got my ship also, when I did, I almost jumped out of my chair I was pretty excited.

Sounds hella lame, I know.

[chaos5061]

It's not that there isn't much to do it's that the hard core people have already blown through everything and there aren't enough people level 50 yet. Bioware said the average level is right around 30 right now. The Hardcore guilds have already beat both both OPs in Nightmare mode. But there isn't just the ops at end level. There is all the other flashpoints. You unlock the hard version of all the Flaspoints when you reach level 50 so they can be done again. Also there is Illum the open PvP planet. But it's not being fought over much because there aren't enough 50's yet to make it any kind of battle like it's supposed to be. I would give it until the end of the 30 days free period before I said there isn't enough to do because by then most people will have at least one 50 by then.

[chaos5061]

Mac version may come one day.

From Massively:
BioWare label leads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are quite dedicated to their fans. At least that's a recurring theme for them when talking about their company's moves in new directions, to which both repeatedly referred during a recent interview in midtown Manhattan. "We know there's a big Mac audience of BioWare fans ... we know that's an important and large audience. And we want to serve that audience," Muzyka told me when asked about a potential Mac version of the his company's latest major release, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

"I'd say 'not yet,'" Zeschuk assured me when I told him that, as a BioWare fan, I'm unable to play The Old Republic on my less than two-year-old MacBook. Though Muzyka was quick to remind me that I can technically play the game on a Windows partition, he also admitted that it wasn't an ideal situation. "We've done a lot of Mac ports before of our games. We haven't announced any details yet for The Old Republic, but we know that's an important and large audience."

Neither would offer a strict timetable on the Mac version, but Zeschuk did note, "That's definitely one of the things we're looking at next. We want to get this launch under our belt and everything stabilized and happy, and then we'll look at other platforms, and that's obviously one of the first ones."

[chaos5061]

Patch Notes are the same as the Test server notes. Forums are read only right now. And the servers are up and playable.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
In my last two posts, I talked about how we will be adding new game systems and content in future patches. I also mentioned that we will be continuing to put effort toward bug fixing, balance changes and exploit proofing. But I didn't give too much information on what we're doing in that regard. So here are some more details on the topic.

Almost every week we will be releasing a new patch. These weekly patches are almost entirely focused on bug fixes, minor balance changes and fixing any exploits in the game. These issues are the highest priority items at the studio. They are reviewed by senior leadership on a daily basis. Bug fixes usually take longer than a week to get into the game because we need to fix the issue and then test the fix. Some bugs take longer than that because of the complexity of the issue.

There are issues that we will fix immediately. These are rare and not every issue can be fixed in this manner. We usually reserve these "emergency fixes" for bugs that are stopping players from playing the game or to exploits that could unbalance the entire game if not corrected.

Any game as big and as complex as The Old Republic will have bugs. We’re working as hard as we can to find, fix, test and patch the game to eliminate as many of them as possible.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Fellow PvPers, thank you for taking on the challenge of player vs player combat in The Old Republic!

In the first week after launch there were over a million Warzone matches played, with nearly half of all players participating in Warzones. Bad news for Republic players, though - the Empire currently leads overall, having won 53% of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches (across all servers). Huttball has been played the most, accounting for 39% of all matches – and yes, we’ll be adding a new same faction vs. same faction enabled Warzone in the future.

We are all really excited at the tremendous volume of participation we’ve seen in PvP thus far. Your interest and demand dictates what we’ll be delivering in the near future. I wanted to give you some insight into where we are with PvP development and where we are going.

First and foremost here is what we are addressing as a top priority:

Level 50 Bracket Warzones: Level 50 players will have a bracket of their own, playing in separate Warzone matches to lower level players. This is something we have wanted to do for some time and now that there is an increasing number of level 50 players we will be implementing the feature in January.

Open World PvP on Ilum: The planet of Ilum currently allows for open world PvP even on a PvE server, but the mechanics and incentives of the planet are not in as intended yet. We’re working on longer term goals for the planet and for other PvP areas, but expect to see some interim adjustments in January - such as more respawn points to focus conflicts, restricting Companion Characters from the area, and revisions to rewards. Ilum will also become a major source of Valor. Valor buffs will increase and decrease based on the objectives your faction owns. These buffs increase the amount of Valor you receive per player kill. However they do not give anything in and of themselves, so players will still need to defeat other players for significant Valor rewards. Additionally, daily and weekly missions will require player kills to complete. Player kills for quests and Valor credit will have diminishing returns per player killed. So, the more players that are fighting other players, the better it is for everyone.

Combat Gameplay: You’ll see several optimizations come online in January, and we are going to continue to tune this as time goes on.

We also have other exciting features coming in the near future including Ranked Warzone Matches, PvP Stat Tracking, Open World PvP Loot Drops, more Warzone medals for different objectives, Guard Optimizations and Target Optimizations.

Additionally we’re looking at ways to enable team vs. team, more level brackets and the ability to choose which Warzone you want to play in.

This is not a complete list of everything we’re working on that’s PvP related, but we have to keep some surprises for later! Thanks again for all your feedback and please keep it coming. We read as much as we can then cross reference with metrics to take action on features and tuning the game to ensure an enjoyable and competitive PvP community.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Earlier today, we deployed patch 1.0.2.

We are working on getting a patch deployed to address the issues that some players are still experiencing after 1.0.2 including:

Fixing an issue that causes in-game chat channels to stop functioning for some players.
Preventing social emotes (like /getdown) from interfering with combat.

We’re currently testing this patch, and we hope to have it deploy sometime in the early hours of the morning tomorrow (CST), but if we experience any issues with this patch, we may hold off its deployment until tomorrow night.

There will be notifications that the servers will be going down before the patch is put in place, so please keep an eye out for these.

In addition, earlier today we deployed a patch (1.0.2a) that resolved a client crash upon character selection that some users were experiencing. The full patch note reads:

Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash to desktop after selecting a character.

Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Please be advised that the servers will be unavailable later tonight or tomorrow morning for a new patch. This deployment will fix a few high priority issues in the game.

Before the patch is put in place, there will be in-game and launcher notifications that the servers will be going down, so please keep an eye out for these.

We will be sure to update this thread as more detailed information becomes available.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
1.0.2c Patch Notes - 1/6/2012

General
Fixed an exploit that could allow players to receive more items than intended via in-game mail.
Resolved an exploit when selling items.

Flashpoints and Operations
Karagga's Palace
Fixed an issue that prevented players from entering the Operation.