SWTOR

[markoBG]

Here are few updates from the official boards:

 

 

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.

 

James Ohlen

Game Director

 

Also:

 

 

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.

 

Gabe Amatangelo

Principal Lead PvP, Operations & Flashpoints Designer

 

 

As you can see from this, people there are working hard on fixing bugs and improving the game features. In time this will not only be a good game but also a good MMO (not that it is bad MMO now, just to those who are saying this isn't MMO but a single player game).

[NovaEquinox]

When you get it, you have to pay 2 months subscription to get the one month free, I can't say it was worth it. But was 50 euro and christmas present. Total Payment : 81 Euros. Should be Payment : 30 euros

[spets21]

can players from South East Asia play this game? if so tell me how cause i tried purchasing the game from bioware it seems its only available from the EURO market.(its not available from my country) keeps apearing when i try to order online from this page http://buy.swtor.com/us/I emailed the folks from bioware(customer support page) seems i`m getting stiffed here still waiting for their reply.

 

oh and the 59$ standard edition seems to be sold out thats just sad T_T

Edited January 8, 2012 by spets21

[markoBG]

When you get it, you have to pay 2 months subscription to get the one month free, I can't say it was worth it. But was 50 euro and christmas present. Total Payment : 81 Euros. Should be Payment : 30 euros

 

I don't know who told you that, or you completely misunderstood how the subscription works.

When you buy the game you will receive a code (if its a digital version, the code will be sent to youe email, if you have retail version, the code will be on the box),

after that you redeem the code and unlock your one month free to play.

To unlock it, and be able to play, you need to subscribe by entering your credit/debit card number, and that's it. No need to pay additional 30 euros or something like that.

[LadyMilla]

To address a few misconceptions:

 

- "The whole game is instanced": not true. Class specific story areas (certain separated sections inside buildings, and a few open-air areas) are instanced, but still you can allow other players to enter your story instance and join in the action. (They are unable to influence the dialogue choices though). There are places where Sith and Republic players can even mingle (they cannot whisper to each other, but /say works).

 

- Heroic areas are group based content, and there are quite a few on each planet (2 and 4-men areas). Flashpoints are the SW:TOR equivalent of "dungeons" - they are mostly enjoyable and give you an authentic Star Wars feel. The General chat is very busy with LFG messages so it's not true at all that it is a single player RPG with MMO elements. At higher levels, even ordinary or class quests can be difficult to complete without assistance from your guild.

 

- Grind: True, there are BONUS objectives that reward you with extra XP, and sometimes even with high-quality loot, if you complete them (most of the time they require that you kill and increasing number of hostiles, e.g. 15/30/45, and then defeat a boss-level NPC). However, they are not mandatory, you can skip them. A friend of mine who does not like killing gazillions of mobs did a few space missions instead, and he outlevelled me in no time so you have an option to bypass those grindy extra objectives.

 

- "No end game content": People tend to forget that a lot of MMOs did not have proper end-game content after launch. SW:TOR has dailies and a few high level Operations (Operations = raids) already in place: they are planning to release regular content updates, much like the Book Updates in Lord of the Rings Online.

[Vindekarr]

Yup, and no doubt they'll be about 40-60$ a pop.

 

Frankly there's nothing wrong with BW's games, they're perfectly acceptable and some have been innovative or otherwise important and excellent, but I can't bring myself to play them anymore, they all feel too similar to eachother, the characters too "achetypal", the stories and settings too well-trodden. Admitedly they're nowhere near as clonish as FPS is these days, but they just don't have the sense of wonder or newness of other games. When I first started on EVE Online, I opened up the game's attached starchart, saw how many explorable stars there were, and was honestly wowed speechless when I found out that if you were rich, charismatic, and mad enough, you could own those stars. Literaly, not figuratively. When I first started playing Halo, stepping out of the escape pod onto the ancient ring world, and looking over the four mile high cliff edge left me a little shocked, and amazed by how far games had progressed technologicaly, and as art. when I started playing Dawn Of War, I was amazed just by seeing WarHammer, a stalwart element of my teenage years, rendered into 16 bit moving, walking, talking, chainsword wielding, moderately psychopathic life.

 

Mass Effect had none of the wonder of EVE, after New Eden, Orion felt almost painfully small, more like a corridor I could look to side to side in rather than an open world. Neverwinter Nights 2 never felt like a new step for technology or art, I remember it lagging a system that had triumphed over crysis, with it's shear inneficiency, and being shocked by the injustice of this great fantasy world rendered so simplisticaly. Dragon Age 2 never wowed me like Dawn Of War, Dawn Of War, with it's pudgy, smudgy, blurry faces, woefully misproportioned and somewhat badly drawn Space Marines, and downright terrible acting, nonetheless told a pretty entertaining yarn about brotherhood and war in the grimd fourty-first millenium. Dragon Age 2 had stunning graphics by comparison to the blurry space marines, but it had no substance. There were castles, dragons, and monsters and swords, but they felt like the same dragons, monsters and swords I'd seen all through my childhood simply re-rendered and not backed up by a good story. Once again, the courageous, intrepid and blurry faced space marines had triumphed over the enemies of man.

 

Those space marines may have been voiced by the lowest bidders, had horribly misproportioned bodies(stumpy legs, hugely long spines) and smudges for faces, but they felt like people. Blurry, specist, socipathic people, but people nonetheless, and you couldn't not feel a little. if Dawn Of War can make you feel a tiny spark of pity for the blurry mishapen and badly drawn Space Marine who just went heroicaly to his death to buy his brothers time because YOU told him to, why can't bioware obsidian make me feel anything at all for infinitely more visualy impressive scifi people?

Edited January 9, 2012 by Vindekarr

[hoofhearted4]

^^ what did any of that have to do with the OP?

 

 

as far as SWTOR goes, i think its safe to say that its a good game, and from the looks of it, its only going to get better. will it have a 10 year run )or however long WoW has been out) like WoW? who knows. but i feel like BioWare has made it clear they are into this game and looking to do what it takes to make this into a great MMORPG.

 

 

i said this game is an RPG with MMO elements stuck in because it is a better solo RPG then any other MMO imo. you can play this game more convincingly solo then you can any other MMO. sure you can play WoW solo, but it doesnt have a story or dialogue to actually make that solo adventure fun, where as SWTOR is designed if you wanna play solo, go for it, and you will very much enjoy it as you did their actual solo RPGs. or you can play it with friends, and with other ppl like you would in any MMO.

Edited January 10, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[Gracinfields]

Actually there are two pieces of Raid content already in TOR, Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace which is 16 player content. Karaggas Palace is apparently short atm as I have found out from someone who already has cleared it on the server I play on; however it is also slated for a content update in the near future. As for Open world PVP half of the planet of ILum is dedicated to this granted its for lvl 50s players. As for how it plays out if you have played Warhammer 40k its pretty much set up like the Castle sieges from there minus the siege weapons.