The patch notes from the 1.1.4 update are now posted over at swtor.com. Amid the usual bug a glitch fixes are a few special updates that players should be pleased with.
The has been an update to some boss mechanics in both the Eternity Vault and Karagga’s Palace. When fighting Soa during the Eternity Vault players will notice that Soa no longer lost threat against his primary target when he casts a Mind trap, and the G4-B3 Heavy Fabricator now has fewer hit point in Karagga’s Palace normal mode. In warzones the queue interface exploit that allowed players to bring extra players into a warzone has been fixed. There is still a chance that imbalances can occur, but players will no longer be able to intentionally trigger the exploit. Also the bug that would cause the east turret in the Alderaan Civil War warzone to sometimes fire twice when captured by the Imperials has been fixed as well.
One of the biggest additions with this patch is the promised ability for players to control the appearance of their cooldown animations.. This of course comes as a welcome addition for most players after some displeasure was expressed with the last two cooldown animation updates. Players can now control if they would like their abilities to a flash when the finish a regular or global cooldown, change the art style of the cooldown animations, and chose to toggle cooldown time text on top of the ability icon in the quickbar.
For all the notes on this and previous patches make sure to visit the Patch Notes page over at swtor.com.
BioWare released a new video on Tuesday entitled “A Look At The Old Republic”. In it various SWTOR developers talk about their feelings on the day of launch and are even treated to a few clips of the crew as the opened the servers on the first day. We are also treated to the thoughts of a few players on what they think of the game so far, including a few in game experiences they have been a part of.
According to the video there have been over 2 million copies of the game sold, and over 14 million characters created by the players! Outside of that the video does not reveal much information, and most of it is old news to current players. It is still a nice little recap of the game from it’s launch to the present day, and a great video to show off to any of your friends who you are trying to convince to get in game with you.
It’s everybody’s favorite time of the week again, weekly maintenance time. Normally the maintenance is scheduled for Tuesdays, but this week it was pushed back until Wednesday for some reason. No word on exactly what all will be patched this week but there is a good chance that all (or most) of the recent patch notes released for the Public Test Server will be implemented in the patch.
The maintenance is scheduled to start at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) and is currently scheduled to last for 7 hours, or until 9AM CST (7AM PST/10AM EST/3PM GMT/4PM CET). No guarantee that the servers will be down for the entire 7 hours that the maintenance is scheduled for, though there is always the chance that the maintenance period could be extended if the developers deem it necessary. As usual all the servers will be down for the entirety of the maintenance period and will most likely require players to download a patch before being able to log back in.
If for some reason the time frame for the maintenance should change we will make sure to update this post with any new information that is made available to us.
Eric Musco, Social Media Coordinator for BioWare, gives players the run down on all the handy map features in BioWare’s second installment in their Quick Start Guide series, titled “Maps and Navigation”. The video goes over a whole slew of navigation related tips; such as bind points, speeders, how to tell if you’ve been to a taxi station before, map filters, the map magnifying glass, and other helpful items.
Veteran players might be quick to pass over the Quick Start guides, but even they may be able to learn a thing or two from these videos. For example, I still occasionally run across players who either don’t know about the Emergency Fleet Pass or don’t know where it is located (it’s in the general section of the abilities tab by the way). The Emergency Fleet Pass allows you quick travel straight to the fleet, though it carries a hefty cooldown time of 18 hours. You can buy other Fleet Passes from a Security Key Vendor (they have a far shorter cooldown period) but everybody gets the Emergency Pass once they hit level 10.
Another aspect of the maps that Mr. Musco covers is the ability to toggle different icons on your mini-map as well as your main map. This is something that I was not aware of and can really help cut down on the clutter players can get on their mini-map when in areas with a lot of vendors, such as the markets of Coruscant or Dromund Kass.
Today marked the second installment of BioWare’s new weekly Q&A session with the players of SWTOR. Though BioWare has said they will limit the questions they answer to 10 a week they have been unable to limit themselves to that amount, answering a total of 12 questions this week. Topics this week included the possibility of a /roll option being implemented, endgame gear set bonuses being transferred with mods, and a lengthy post about healing during operations.
We will share some of the questions with you after the jump. Continue Reading »
BioWare fans were hit with some sad news today when Drew Karpyshyn announced on his blog that he will no longer be working with BioWare, or on any video games for that matter. Karpyshyn is well known for his work on Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, as well as several novels linked to those games.
Drew had this to say about his decision.
For the past twelve years I’ve had the privilege to work at one of the best companies in the video game industry, side by side with the most talented and incredible group of people I’ve ever had the good fortune to know. I’ve enjoyed my time at BioWare immensely, but it’s time for me to move on.
I’m leaving to focus more time and energy on my novels and other non-video game related projects. But even though I’ll no longer be working on games for BioWare, I’m not going to be severing all ties with them. Many of my closest friends still work at the company, and I’m also in the process of writing the next Star Wars: The Old Republic novel, though I can’t say too much about it yet……
Even if you are someone who is going to miss my contributions to the video game world, I hope you’ll be somewhat mollified by the fact that I’m going to have more time for novels, screenplays and other projects. I’ll always have fond memories of BioWare, and a great appreciation for everything it meant to me. But my future is wide open, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store.
Drew
Drew is one of the nicest, most laid back writers in the business who always made time to talk with his fans. Luckily we will have one more gem from him in the form of a new Old Republic novel before he rides off into the sunset. While it is truly sad to see Drew leaving BioWare we here at SWTOR-Life wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
BioWare announced recently that they will soon be officially launching Star Wars: The Old Republic in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore on March 1st of this year. This means opening localized servers for those regions and making the game more available to players in those areas, who until now could only play the game by ordering online and playing on a European or North American server.
But what about those players who live in that area but are already in game you ask? Well BioWare will be offering these players a limited chance to transfer their characters to a localized server in order to mitigate some latency issues by player on a server in their region. Players who qualify for the character transfer will be contacted in early March with details on how to move their characters to the new servers. Some players are wondering if this is a sign that BioWare will allow all players to transfer characters between servers sometime in the future, but the developers have not commented on that matter at this time. We here at SWTOR-Life are happy to see the Asia Pacific region get some server love, and hope that both new and old players in this region enjoy all the benefits that having localized servers gives them.
You can read the original post about the upcoming release here.
The patch notes for 1.1.3 are now up. No major changes were made this week outside of the general fixing of bugs and tweaking of abilities., though PvP enthusiasts will be happy to know they will no longer not receive credit for winning a match when the first player to enter a Warzone leaves before the match is over. The Surge stat has also been rebalanced and now reaches diminishing returns the same way as other damage ratings, and its per point damage contribution has been reduced by approximately 10%.
The application process for the upcoming Guild Summit has ended. All the guild leaders who applied for an invitation should expect to hear back from BioWare in a few days after they have the time to review everyone’s applications.
BioWare also announced that certain parts of the summit will be broadcast on a livestream, including presentations by developers and feedback discussions. This way even players and guild leaders who cannot attend are able to participate, great news for anyone who has ideas they want to share but are unable to secure an invitation or able to take time off work to head to Austin for the event. Even if you cannot catch the livestream BioWare will be posting videos of the event after it has ended.
BioWare will be revealing more details as we get closer to the event date. Keep watching SWTOR-Life as we bring you all the updates as they are announced.
Tomorrow is Tuesday and you know what that means, it’s time for some weekly SWTOR maintenance. As usual the servers are scheduled to go down starting at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) and are scheduled to be back up again by 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET).
The current Public Server 1.1.3 patch is what we can expect to see updated during the maintenance time, but we will not know for sure until the official patch notes are posted. Keep in mind that the servers could always be back up sooner or later than the scheduled start up time depending on how the maintenance goes. If the time frame should change for any reason we shall let you know.
