Yulel came awake after a short dream about floating on a cloud. It was then she realized she’d been moved, chair and all. She was still on Mannett Point but in a different room of the separatist base. A gruff-sounding man shouted, “And you…. You can untie her once we leave.”
A weak female voice responded, “Yes, master.”
Master?
The smuggler forced herself to remain calm. She held her breath and listened as the man left the room. Once he was gone, Yulel flinched at the sudden touch of gentle fingers around her head as the female who spoke removed her blindfold.
When she felt the cloth float away, Yulel gradually opened her eyes to a squint. The separatists had moved her to a small dark room made of bars with an electromagnetic lock. The cell was in a larger room filled with crates and supply canisters all marked for orbital transport.
Joining her in the room were several female Twi’leks, all of them bruised and dressed in tatters of former street clothes or uniforms, all huddled together in a corner. The one who removed Yulel’s blindfold and was now working on the knot at her ankles was dressed as a dancing girl. “Wait,” she said. The girl stopped working on the bonds and looked up at her. The young Twi’lek’s skin was the color of a clear winter sky, her eyes a brilliant green that should have been filled with the wonder of youth. Instead they looked dull and sullen.
Yulel spoke softly with a slight tremble in her throat. “W-What are they doing with us?”
Do you want to help BioWare test out new and upcoming content? Do you want to be one of the first people to see what is in store for the SWTOR world? Well now you have your chance.
BioWare is looking to expand its testing and is looking for experienced players in Austin, Texas to help them test upcoming game content. This includes new Flashpoints, PvP Warzones, and end game Operations. Players will be expected to dedicate at least one weekend an month to testing new content. As an added bonus, this is a fully paid position. That’s right, you can get paid for testing new SWTOR content! If you are interested then fill out and submit this survey.
Don’t live in Austin and still want to help out? Well you are in luck. BioWare is also looking to get teams of players from various guilds to help them test the new content we will be seeing in the 1.2 game update. This includes the new Warzone, Flashpoint, and Operation that will be included with the patch. Guilds will need to put together a group consisting of anywhere between 8 and 20 players that will be willing to put their live games aside for a while to test new content on the Public Test Server. You can read all the details and requirements in this blog post. Space is limited, so if you are interested get those applications in soon!
We are going to take a break from our regularly scheduled activities this week on TOR Lore and forgo the explanation of a facet of Star Wars lore. Instead we are going to looking at a single individual, one of the most influential people to exist at the time of The Old Republic, the Sith Emperor. This article will contain heavy spoilers for both TOR and some of the novels associated with the game, so if you wish to keep these things a secret I suggest you turn back now. Otherwise I welcome you to join me as we examine the life and exploits of one of the most influential figures of this time. Continue Reading »
Today marks the much anticipated day where The Old Republic officially brought servers online for the Oceanic regions. Though players in those areas could play during the US/EU launch they were forced to log onto servers located across the globe, forcing them to deal with all the latency problems one would expect from not having servers devoted specifically to their region. Now these players will finally get a chance to play SWTOR on localized servers. Three servers have opened up for these players; the Dalborra, the Gav Daragon, and the Master Dar’Nala, each being a PvE, RP, and PvP server respectively.
However there is some bittersweet news to go along with this story as well. Players have been told that they will be able to transfer their current characters to the Oceanic servers, as long as they meet a list of requirements that qualifies them for the transfer. But it turns out they will not be able to do so until sometime in late April, and any characters made on or after this day will not be transferred. Also, full guild transfers will not be possible, forcing guilds to basically start from the ground up on these new servers. This is forcing players to choose between what they consider more important right now; playing their high level characters on their current server, or starting fresh on localized servers. To make matters worse some players are reporting a might higher latency rate on these new servers, making the decision to start over even more difficult.
despite these issues it is still a great day for players in the Asia Pacific Territories. BioWare has set up a handy FAQ thread for these servers to help answer any questions players might have. We here at SWTOR-Life and SWTOR-Spy would like to extend a warm welcome any new players from that region into the game, hopefully your Star Wars experience is a great one!
It’s Tuesday and you know what that means, time for some SWTOR server downtime. BioWare will be performing their weekly maintenance starting at 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) on the 28th and hope to be done by 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET) of the same day. As usual they cannot guarantee that the servers will be back up by then, but there is also the chance that they will be back up before that.
No word on anything specific that will be patched this week but there is a good chance that most or all of the recent changes implemented on the Public Test Server will be included. If the maintenance start time is changed for any reason we will update this post with the new information.
It’s Friday and that means it is time for one of my favorite new things BioWare is doing these days, Community Q&A. They managed to go over 10 questions again this week, another trend I would like to see continued, and answered a range of questions from implementing a LFG tool, improving end game usefulness of crafting skills, and even touched briefly on the chance the players will be able to customize their current ships or get new ones. (Hint: Don’t expect it anytime soon.)
You can find all the questions answered this week after the jump. If you have a question you would like to ask the development team post it over at the official forums in this weeks Official Q&A Thread. Continue Reading »
“How much further?” Jenla sneered as she stepped over a clump of something that could have been random Huttmuck or chemlizard scat.
Neither the Mandalorian nor his sister turned back, so Jenla trudged on in silence and tried to keep up.
Margis whispered to her brother, “Your mate is somethin’ of a complainer. I woulda thought the Empire raised less squeamish lieutenants.”
Boarsch raised his chin and squinted past his sister. “She’s a good officer, Margis. She’s smart and dedicated. Leave her alone already.”
Margis shrugged and gave up on the taunting. The Chiss Imp wasn’t really worth her time. Besides, they had reached the edge of the reservoir. “Here’s what I wanted you to see, Boar.”
Boarsch and Jenla stood on either of Margis and looked out at the stagnant rust-colored lake.
“What are we looking at?” The agent asked.
Margis looked up at her brother. “This is my village’s water supply.”
As Jenla wrinkled her nose in disgust, Boarsch said, “You drink this?”
Margis nodded solemnly. “Almost as-is. The water purifiers gave out some time ago.”
Jenla said, “You could die drinking this slime.” That’s when Margis finally turned to acknowledge her.
A tear formed in the hardened Hutta woman’s eye. “The doctor in our village says I have about two months to live.”
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.” While the validity of this statement is questionable (you don’t often see people deflecting lightsaber strikes with blaster bolts), the truth remains that blasters are still pretty awesome. Ranging from the traditional blaster pistol to the massive blaster cannons found on starships, blasters are easily the most common weapon one can find in the Star Wars universe. Held by everyone from the common farmer to smugglers to bounty hunters, blasters of all shapes and sizes are extremely deadly in the right hands. Today we will take a quick look at the history behind these weapons, and learn a little bit about what makes them work. Continue Reading »
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.
