SWTOR Info

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Gamers in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore can now join the fastest-growing MMORPG of all time, as Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ has officially launched in those countries! Fans will be able to take part in their very own Star Wars™ saga on regional servers.

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[chaos5061]

Good morning. First of all, if you haven't seen the FAQ already, I wanted to let you know it's now been updated.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aussiedroid
Please provide an update on what happens with our Legacy points ASAP. The community has been requesting this info for weeks now. Why is it so hard to get this info??

Also as our friends in EU/US cannot come, can you please give some indication on when wider server transfers will be implemented.

I understand the frustration, and if we had details that we were ready to share, we'd share them. We don't yet.

As I mentioned previously, more information on the character transfer process, especially in regards to things such as Legacy levels, will be released closer to when character transfer is available (currently scheduled for late April).

The Legacy system complicates the character transfer system considerably. We're aware of the implications with transfers though and working to try and ensure the smoothest transition for those with Legacy levels.

General character transfer will follow after the optional one-off transfer already announced for Asia-Pacific players.

Quote:
Originally Posted by deags
I'm Just wondering what is going to happen with character names, when i go to get my characters transferred and my name is already taken is there just going to be quick option to choose a name or will i have to get CS help just to get it done...

From the FAQ:

"If your character name is already taken on the destination server, your character will be transferred, but you will be prompted to choose a new name for the character when you log in to the server."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Etharial
Just logged in to the PVE server, and experienced 400ms+ latency.

Guess I'm staying on the US servers, which gives me about 200-250ms.

Unfortunately, without placing a server in every country, it's impossible to ensure lower latency for all. We'll continue to monitor reports of latency issues for anomalies.

Adding servers in every country that can play The Old Republic is not feasible. However, as anyone playing The Old Republic is able to login to any server or choose any server region, you are not restricted in where you play, and can find the best latency for you.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Hello everyone! We are very excited to announce that Game Update 1.2 will be hitting our Public Test Server soon.

As you know, Game Update 1.2 is packed with new content, including a new Flashpoint, Operation, and Warzone. To that end, we’re looking for some end-game guilds to test this new content and to provide feedback before the update goes out to our live servers.

While we don’t have the technology for mass character transfers yet, we do have a manual process to copy characters from our Live servers to our Public Test Server that we will be offering for Guilds that are accepted for testing.

If you and your Guild would like to help us out in testing Game Update 1.2 content, please check out the details in this blog post.

Spaces are limited, so we can’t guarantee that your Guild will be accepted for testing. Please get your emails in as soon as you can. We are looking to begin the copying process soon. Accepted Guilds will be notified via email, at which point more information will be given.

Thanks in advance!

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Hello everyone. I can absolutely understand the frustrations expressed here, and I appreciate that for the most part, you're being constructive in your comments. Here's a little more insight into the situation.

The character transfer system is being actively worked on by the development team. It's a large, complex project, made more complicated by the Legacy System - and it has to work perfectly. As always, it is not the only task the team as a whole is undertaking, but it's a priority. It has not been deliberately delayed, nor is it being 'held back' for any reason. As you know, the first stage of the system will be a one-off, optional transfer for those who are based in the regions defined in our FAQ. At some point after that, we'll bring a more fully-featured character transfer system online for all to use.

I can understand the frustration of those of you who have been playing on the US servers and waiting for transfers. We know your enthusiasm and excitement for the game - you wouldn't have taken the steps you did to get the game earlier than the official launch if you weren't enthusiastic. We're working as hard as we can to get the system in place. If we could have brought it online earlier, we would have. However, priorities post-launch had to be directed towards the game itself. The team's been working flat-out to improve the game, including bug fixes and additional content.

When we announced our launch territories last year we knew many more fans were excited to play The Old Republic. That's why we moved quickly to launch in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, with more territories being lined up for future launches. Our primary focus when launching in any new territory has to be to reach more players. Ultimately, that's best for the continuing success of the game. We want everyone who wishes to play on the new servers to be able to do so, hence character transfer being offered. With that said, in this case we felt it was important to get the game into the hands of new players as soon as possible. That, combined with our post-launch development priorities, meant that character transfer did not make our launch date for these territories.

The development team remains committed to delivering a robust character transfer system for all, with our first priority being for Asia-Pacific players. If we can bring the system to you earlier than expected, we will, but for now we’re aiming towards late April.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealthy_Monkey
I am an Australian player- can you confirm that I will still be eligible for the character transfers if I cancel my account until late april, or whether I'm expected to maintain an active subscription until that date.

You do not have to maintain an active subscription until character transfer is available. From the FAQ:

To qualify for free character transfers, players must meet the following requirements by Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 5:01PM EDT, 7:01PM NZDT, 2:01PM HKT, 2:01PM SGT:

You specified that your country is Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, or Singapore during your account registration process.

Redeemed an Official Game Production Registration Code on www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com Code Redemption Center.

Have had or currently have entered a valid recurring payment method or redeemed a Pre-Paid Game Time Code.

Only characters created on The Old Republic servers by February 28, 2012, 5:01PM EDT, 7:01PM NZDT, 2:01PM HKT, 2:01PM SGT qualify for transfers.

Characters created by qualified players on a non-Asia Pacific server after the February 28th deadline will not qualify for transfers to Asia Pacific servers.

Emphasis above is mine, but basically as long as you have been a subscriber at some point and meet the other criteria, you're eligible.

[chaos5061]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Palathas
1) As above about legacy levels.

2) Is it just the one character or is it a server full of characters?

3) Are all items carried over from the characters personal hold and what they are wearing? (More of a confirmation)

I'm not creating any Asia-Pacific characters at the moment due to the uncertainty of what's exactly happening with the transfers.

We'll have more information about Legacy levels and experience a little closer to the window for character transfer. The system is still in development, and I don't want to promise anything that may not happen for whatever reason.

With that said, the development team is being very careful to ensure that the experience is as smooth as possible. We don't want to penalize anyone's progression just because they transferred their character.

On question (2), you will be able to transfer multiple characters, although there will be some limitations (eg available slots on a server). Again, more details will come closer to the time, but you will not be limited to one character.

On question (3) the only current restrictions are listed in the FAQ. After transfer:

The character will no longer be a part of its guild - Guilds and guild membership will not be transferred to your new server. You will need to create or join a new guild on your new server.

Your Friends list will be reset – Friend lists are server specific, so you will need to repopulate your list with players from your new server.

Before you transfer your character, it is important to ensure the following:

The character has no items listed on the Galactic Trade Network (auction house) – active Galactic Trade Network listings will not be transferred to your new server.

The character has no items or credits in their mailbox – In-game mail will not be transferred to your new server. Make sure you have removed everything in your mailbox before initiating the transfer. Otherwise, the contents will be lost.

Hope that helps clarify a little!

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Please discuss Georg Zoeller's blog post, Economic Changes in Patch 1.1.5, in this thread.

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Fans of Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ can now show their allegiance with pride, as BioWare and LucasArts have partnered with the leader in clothing for gamers and geeks, J!nx, to produce a line of shirts based on the game! The J!nx Star Wars: The Old Republic line offers customers twelve different designs to choose from; eight shirts that represent each of the in-game classes, two shirts that declare your allegiance to the Sith Empire or the Galactic Republic, and shirts that feature the Light Side and Dark Side symbols used in the game.

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[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for six hours on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 from 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 8AM CST (6AM PST/9AM EST/2PM GMT/3PM CET). All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than six hours, but could be extended.

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 be a patch to download. After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 8AM CST (6AM PST/9AM EST/2PM GMT/3PM CET)

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

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

[chaos5061]

Weekly Q&A 4

From Bioware:
Hello and welcome to this week’s Community Q&A blog! This past week we asked for your questions and today, our developers have answers for you. Please note in some cases we’ve combined multiple questions into one, and we have edited some questions for clarity.

This week is a bit short on answers, but we’ll definitely make up for it with the upcoming Guild Summit, which is going to be packed full of information! So much, in fact, that we’re going to postpone our next Community Q&A blog until March 16th in order to allow for all of the new information to sink in. We’ll open up the official forum thread for the March 16th Q&A on Tuesday afternoon (CST).

So, don’t forget to check out the Livestream for the Guild Summit on Monday (more information will be coming very soon) and we’ll see you all here again on March 16th!

Be sure to discuss this blog here.



JediCarve - Will our ships ever get upgraded to include mailboxes and the Galactic Trade Network so that we will be able to access those without having to go through the process of load screens and Orbital Stations/Spaceports?

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): On one hand, we really like making the ships richer and more useful, and on the other hand, we also want to be sure that the fleets feel like vibrant centers of the game community. So the answer is... Yes! And this feature is coming as soon as Game Update 1.2 ... as ship features you can unlock as part of the Legacy system. Watch for more information about Legacy unlocks coming in Game Update 1.2 - we should be dropping that Real Soon Now.



spcdog - When will we be able to add people to our Friends List who are not online? The main point of the Friends List is to let you know when friends are online. Right now, I have to already know when friends are online to add them, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Damion Schubert: This is a bug - thanks for calling my attention to it (this issue is somewhat sporadic, so it fell through the cracks). We are getting this into the pipe to get fixed, most likely for Game Update 1.2.



ThtreLady - Can we get character achievement announcements in the guild chat channels? I.E. Krysari is now level 39, etc? I'd love to be able to congratulate my fellow guildies, but I have no way of seeing when they level up or kill something spectacular.

Damion Schubert: This is a good idea - cheap but effective features like this are, as a designer, among my favorites. I'll bring this to the Guild Team, but no telling when they will prioritize it compared to the other guild love they are working on.



Arodin - Characters with a neutral or "grey" alignment are at a disadvantage because there are almost no Relics that they can equip until endgame. This forces players to stick with either light side or dark side dialogue options exclusively, limiting freedom and roleplaying. Will Relics be added that can be equipped by neutral-aligned characters, and are there any other plans for neutral gear?

Damion Schubert: Grey alignment is in the pipe - we have a design, and that design includes a plan to make the itemization fair for light, dark, and grey. I do not have an ETA for this feature at this time, but can't wait to announce one.



Evilvision - Any chance of getting the ability to lock our camera angle? I probably spend 20% of my time during PvP adjusting this when I should be well.... PvP-ing.

Damion Schubert: The ability to turn off smart camera is in Game Update 1.2 (this is what makes the camera swing behind you when you start to move).



Rtwozero - Any plans to implement region by region maintenance times?

Blaine Christine (Sr. Producer, Live Services): At this time there are no plans to implement separate maintenance times by region. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a global service with no restrictions on a player’s server choice.

Unfortunately the trade-off is that we have to maintain a single service environment, which leads to global maintenance periods. We are very sensitive to the fact that we are limiting play time once per week with a global scheduled maintenance.

We have carefully examined global peak times and the number of players affected by our planned downtime. Those of you that have been with us since launch may have noticed that the first few patches were scheduled at 4 AM CST; we very quickly adjusted to 2 AM CST. The reason for this adjustment was an analysis of the peak time play patterns by region that resulted in the current start time.

We understand that this is especially concerning to players in the European and newly opened Asia/Pacific server regions. We will always do our best to minimize the downtime, but it is the only way that we can perform critical service updates on the game client and on the game’s network infrastructure, underlying platform systems and so on.

Thank you for bringing your concerns to us – we will always listen and do our best to make adjustments when possible, but at this time, we have to move forward with a single global maintenance period.



CaptainJammo - Can you clarify the role of the Accuracy stat? Right now, it seems lackluster and/or unnecessary for many classes, yet it appears on all of their end game gear.

Georg Zoeller (Principal Lead Combat Designer): Accuracy counters your target's ability to defend (dodge, deflect, etc.) against your attacks. You are correct about the accuracy budget on the current end game gear being too generous for most scenarios - unless you are a dedicated tank killer in PvP, you probably do not need as much as you get from Rakata gear at the moment and you should consider swapping out some mods to support your preferred playstyle.

For the upcoming tier of new gear, we have an improved distribution of stats for both PvP and PvE gear.



Gidoru - In last week’s Q&A, you detailed upcoming changes to the Crafting System with crit crafting orange gear and removing base mods from purple gear. I think that this issue needs some clarification, as what was stated essentially suggests that orange crit crafted gear will always be superior to either PvP or PvE gear. This is because players will be able to simply remove the mods in their PvP or PvE gear and place it in a piece of crit crafted orange gear that will additionally provide extra stats as a result of the augment slot. Is it your intention to make crafted gear superior to gear obtained in other ways?

Emannuel Lusinchi (Technical Design Director): Yes, for Game Update 1.2, this is correct. Crafted gear is, in theory, superior to endgame gear obtained in other ways. However, it is worth pointing out that putting together crit crafted gear, including item modifications, requires more effort, not less. Now, the reason I specifically mention Game Update 1.2 is that we will introduce new mechanics in a future update that, without diminishing the usefulness of crit crafted items, will bring some interesting changes and that’s all I will say about that!

[chaos5061]

From Bioware:
BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Friends Trial starts tomorrow, March 6th!* For a limited time, players who have an active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription will be able to invite up to three of their friends to explore the Star Wars™ galaxy.

The Star Wars: The Old Republic Friends Trial is an opportunity for players to invite three (3) of their friends to take part in a 7-day trial of the game. During this trial period, invited players can explore each of the four Origin Worlds, and experience the opening adventures for each class as they start along their epic journey.

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[chaos5061]

Just to let you know the Guild Summit info will not be posted till I get home from work. So go and watch the stream beginning at 2pm CST here for info faster: http://www.swtor.com/guildsummit I'll get the info up as soon as I can but you will get it faster if you can watch the stream.

[chaos5061]

Since Bioware has released no official posts yet about what they discussed at the Guild Summit I will be posting the live blog from Darth Hater.com for each panel. If they put up official posts I will post them.

[chaos5061]

Live Stream Operations and Flashpoints

Live Stream Operations and Flashpoints

Live stream resumes at 2pm CST.
Will be starting around 2:15pm CST as people file into the room. The live stream has surpassed 10,000 viewers.
Seated on panel is Game Director James Ohlen, Lead Game Designer Daniel Erickson, Principal Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller, Associate Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi, Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert, and Lead PvP, Operations & Flashpoints Designer Gabe Amatangelo
Gabe up first with information on Operations and Flashpoints.
38% of level 50 players have participated in an Operation.
Eternity Vault had bugs. Karagga's Palace launched a bit more smoothly, and they hope future Operations will be more polished.
Normal Operation mode may be considered a bit too easy. Loot mode in normal may be improved.
The 1.2 Operation "Explosive Conflict" will be the first "Tier 2" raid instance.
Nightmare mode will be made harder, but needs a lot of testing and will not launch with 1.2 update.
"Normal" mode will be renamed to "Story" mode.
Orange gear will become more viable as end-game gear in the 1.2 update.
At least two more Operations in development. Will be included in future major updates.
Planning on better end game progression via Flashpoints.
Lost Island is the new 1.2 Flashpoint. Continues where Kaon Under Siege left off.
A "group finder" feature will be introduced in the 1.3 game update. Single server only to focus on community.
Q: Can trash mobs drop cash to cover repair costs? Georg: We have some graphs later to show credit distribution. We don't plan on making mobs drop more cash in 1.2 but we do have plans to distribute money a bit differently. We will be doing something about repair costs so people don't feel like they're broke.
Gabe: We're talking about a bolstering system, but no ETA.
Q: Could we see separate lockouts for Hard and Nightmare modes? Gabe: No. Same lockout for Hard and Nightmare. Story mode is on a separate lockout to players can casually experience it.
Q: Any other incentives for doing different raid settings? Difference between 8-man and 16-man? Gabe: The target is to make 8-man and 16-man about the same difficulty. It's still the same type of loot, though you'll get more in 16-man so have a bit of a bonus chance to getting mounts or recipe types of drops.
Q: Any plans for timestamped boss kills for competition? Gabe: Yes, we want to do something like that. Damion: I want to get achievements in the right way. We want to give "killer" player types the tools to be able to compete and validate achievements like world firsts.
Q: Not a huge difference between current different tiers of raid gear. Will there be a bigger difference in the Tier 2 raids? Gabe: We didn't want to inflate the Tier 1 raid gear too much. Georg: One more tier of PvP and PvE coming. The stats should be more sensible, with not a ton of Accuracy for example. 1.1.5 will introduce new lightsaber crystals with different stats. There will be more disparity between PvP and PvE gear, there will be less crossover. Won't be as easy to use the top tier of PvP gear to be successful in PvE.
Q: Metrics for Operations? When will we get threat meters and combat logs? Gabe: We don't want to rely as much as meters, we want to rely more on visual in-game cues. We do want to have those metrics though. They're not in 1.2 though. Georg: We do realize it is useful to figure out what is being done wrong. But we don't want to people to be able to go out and judge you. With 1.2 you will be able to enable a chat log feature that indicates what killed you or what you killed. We also will have a detailed parseable combat log able to be written to disc. The log will not be available in-game.
Q: Will crafting be able to compete with end-game drops? Georg: The answer is yes, but we'll talk about that more later during another presentation.
Q: What is the future of the space game? James: We like space. We have a secret project going on involving space but can't comment on it more right now.
Q: With regards to enrage timers in encounters, that seems to lock us into 1 tank, 2 healers, 5 DPS group. Will that change to allow more dynamic group makeups? Gabe: We intended to need two tanks for Operations, but it didn't work out quite that way. We plan on going more in that direction with 1.2 update. Damion: We didn't want to have different encounters requiring different group compositions, so we'll be moving more towards that to.
Q: Will there be any "split goal" type operations like we see in the movies? James: Yes, that's something we'd like to do in the future.
Q: As an Operations leader will we get more tools for managing parties? Gabe: There will be more talk about that during the UI panel, but yes, we want to improve the UI for the Ops group.
Q: Will we get a "ready check" system for Flashpoints and Operations? Gabe: We know there are some staples like this missing, and we want to get those in as well.
Q: Are we going to implement hard modes for Flashpoints that don't have them? Gabe: Yes, but no ETA.
Q: Can you get schematics from reverse engineering Operation gear? Georg: Yes. More on that later.
Q: Will there be another difficulty level added to Flashpoints? Gabe: Not in the near future. We'll add more Flashpoints and make them progressively harder.
Q: Will you do more dynamic/open world specific Operations? Gabe: Update 1.2 will have more open world Operation bosses.
That's the end of the Operations and Flashpoints presentation. Will resume with the PvP panel in a few minutes.

[chaos5061]

Live Stream PvP Discussion

Live Stream PvP Discussion

Gabe talking about the current state of Warzones.
Medals are not currently balanced across classes. Healers are at a disadvantage.
Faction imbalance is something they want to address.
People leaving Warzones in the middle of the game is also something they want to handle.
New Warzone: Majority 3-point control objective. Need to have two out of the three objectives to "do damage" to the objective.
Update 1.2 will include ranked Warzones.
Will use ELO ranking system for both solo and group play in ranked Warzones. This is considered "pre-season" will ratings sort themselves out.
New PvP Warzone dailies will be introduced in the 1.2 update.
Objectives scores currently do not work quite right because not all the medals are in the game. 18 new medals to be introduced.
Medal rewards will be capped to try and prevent medal farming.
There will be medals for winning matches fast as opposed to dragging them out and trying to farm other medals.
Losing team will be encouraged to stick it out to try and earn more rewards.
Vote to kick system will be in for 1.2 update. Players can vote for inactive players to be kicked from the match. They are working on ways to prevent abuse of kicking people who don't deserve it.
Medal count will be a modified on overall rewards. Someone who doesn't do anything in a Warzone will not see much reward. This should discourage AFK players.
There will be more emphasis on Expertise and PvP oriented stats on new PvP gear to make it not as powerful in PvE.
Adding new entry level PvP gear for new level 50s to bridge the gear gap between new level 50s and people in higher tier PvP gear.
Existing Warzones will be made same faction. Targetted for the 1.2 or 1.3 update.
Future updates will include cross server matches. Ranked matches will be more likely to go cross server to find a more even match.
Want to introduce the ability to create tournament brackets to allow for mini-tournaments between PvP teams.
Will be able to queue with a full 8-person group for Warzones. Will also allow groups to persist between Warzones so you don't have to re-form every time.
Open world PvP is less popular than Warzones. Three times more level 50s are playing Warzones than participating in Ilum.
Some organized PvP events are happening in Outlaw's Den, which is good and will be supported. Minor changes to make it more accessible.
Ilum was a bit too ambitious and had some technical difficulties. They will be pulling it back a bit, won't be incentivized as much while it undergoes some redesign to make it more fun.
New tier of PvP gear called "War Hero" will be obtained through ranked Warzone PvP.
Less randomness will be involved in gearing up PvP gear.
Some issues to be addressed: Mirror class imbalances, speed hacking and exploits. Hope to get all the exploits taken care of by the time ranked season one start, another reason to have the pre-season first.
Q: Will match making in non-ranked Warzones be improved so solo players don't get steamrolled by pre-mades? Gabe: The current system tries to do that now, but loosens up over time. With the ranked system, out match-making system will improve. It still can be an issue if we have uneven numbers of peope queuing. Cross-server queuing should help that too in the future.
Q: With more focus on PvP gear with PvP stats, will the diminishing returns on Expertise be changed? Georg: Yes, all the caps and numbers for PvP stats have been adjusted for the new tier.
Q: Can you give us some insight on what happened with Ilum? Gabe: Once we went live, some technical things effected us that we didn't expect.
Q: Will we get objective based fighting back in Ilum? Gabe: We had planned on having objectives locked for periods of time. In beta, we had issues with them becoming permanently locked, so we had to adjust our plans a bit for launch. Then we had trading objectives happening, so that's not what we wanted either, and we went to kills. Without sharing too much of the future Ilum plan, it will be objective focused.
Q: Will we see player bounties? How about making more use of the pre-launch Adversary system? Gabe: We'd love player bounties. We don't have any solid plans for it. Damion: Adversary stuff is on the Wall of Crazy. No ETA, but it's on the list. We'll talk more about it during the Guild presentation.
Q: Are there plans to be able to queue up against a specific team in Warzones? Could we do guild vs guild Warzones? Gabe: Yes, we have a design for it. It didn't make the 1.2 update, but it's something we want to do.
Q: Will PvP gear upgrades become less grindy for players who are high Valor rank? Gabe: Right now the only way to get Battlemaster gear right now is from the bags from dailies, which can lead to bad behavior like leaving losing Warzones. In update 1.2 it will be direct purchase of items. There will be different colored gear to differentiate rewards. Ranked Warzone Commendations will allow for direct purchase of the new tier of PvP gear. Valor rank was meant more of a prestige thing originally, not a way to progress through gear.
Q: How about larger group PvP content? Gabe: We have larger Warzones in the work. We are limited to 8-man Warzones right now. We do enjoy massive PvP battles, which was the intent of Ilum and Outlaw's Den. We do want to provide more content for larger PvP battles in the future.
Q: Is the current Valor system going away with Ranked Warzones? What about Guild vs. Guild PvP? Gabe: Grouping up for Ranked Warzones for up to 8 people should provide more Guild related PvP content. Yes, Valor will become more of a prestige or experience thing than a progression tool.
Q: Are there any targetting improvements coming along for PvP? How about clickable nameplates? Gabe: We plan on making improvements to tab targetting, labels on the nameplates, bigger box to click on to target someone. Some of those will not quite make it into the 1.2 update.
Q: Can we see improvements to targetting, auto-facing, and strafing in PvP? It isn't very pretty to see players running around one another in circles to fight in PvP. Gabe: Auto-facing seems to diminish the tactics in PvP. There are different thoughts on this. We are working on some polish with the animations and graphics, so that will look better. Auto-facing in PvP is not likely. Georg: We tried both in testing, and went with what we have. Damion: With auto-facing, it comes down to who has a better rotation and we want PvP to have more dimensions than that.
Q: Will obtaining a best-in-slot set of PvP gear in 1.2 will you need to craft or do PvE to obtain it? Gabe: The best PvP gear will come from Ranked Warzones. Georg: With the ability to extract mods from Operation gear and better orange gear, it would be possible to slot in mods to make something that's among the best gear.
Q: Some stats on PvP gear isn't incredibly useful in PvP. Will the stats (such as tanking stats) be made more useful in PvP? Georg: Tanks who pick and choose or stack certain stats could be making themselves vulnerable to certain types of classes. It's a circular situation where since people are not taking Accuracy gear then tanks can skip Defense gear. With ranked Warzones where numbers are changing and people will be more aggressive, we'll see some changes towards the attitudes towards these stats.
Q: Will there be more things to do for end-game PvP besides dailies? Gabe: Ranked Warzones will not have such limitations as dailies since there's no cap on them.
Q: Will there be dynamic PvP events? James: We're not talking too much about dynamic events yet. We have a team working on it and have given them a bunch of tech. We have surprises, but we can't talk about it yet. But you could see something like that.
Gabe: We will be putting in a type of reward/badge drop for world PvP kills.
That concludes the PvP talk. Up next is the Legacy System in a few minutes.