I found this interesting tidbit in the current EULA for Star Wars: The Old Republic – (verified identical in both the one from last Beta and the one currently downloadable at www.swtor.com/download ). In this Article, I will be speculating on the meaning of a specific section of the EULA:

Section 2, Part C reads as follows:

C. Transfer.

 

You may make a one time permanent transfer of all your rights to install and use packaged Software on physical recording media to another individual or legal entity provided that: (a) you transfer or delete all copies of the Software ; and (b) you retain no copies of the Software. You may not transfer your Account and/or any associated subscriptions to a third party, and EA may require that any subsequent end user of the Software register the Software online as a condition of use, and will not be responsible should you not be able to transfer the right to access game play, receive updates, upgrades, dynamically served content, any achievements and/or items already purchased or otherwise acquired by you through micro-transactions whether or not paid for, or the right to use any online service(s) of EA. It is your responsibility to ascertain the ability of any person to whom you intend to transfer the Software to receive the Software and/or open and utilise an Account, including by consulting any applicable Terms of Service to determine the conditions that may be applicable for the use of an Account, if applicable.

Now what exactly does this mean? Let’s take it one tidbit at a time.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Daelda, EULA, micro-transactions, speculation, swtor

Yes you heard it right.  If you are like me and are jonesing for your SWTOR fix then you will be happy to know that early access has been moved up two days to December the 13th instead of the 15th we had previously thought.

In a news announcement on the swtor.com website we  got the following,

Early Game Access* for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is only a few days away! Starting December 13, 2011, The Old Republic will begin emailing invitations to start your Early Game Access. Invitations will be sent throughout the Early Game Access period offering rolling access to the game in the order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code, so be sure to check your email inbox!

To ensure that players can get into the game as quickly as possible when their Early Game Access begins, we are now allowing everyone who has redeemed a Pre-Order Code at our Code Redemption Center to pre-load the game to their computer.

In order to download the game client before Early Game Access begins, you need have already logged into your account and redeemed your Pre-Order Code. Once you have done this, you can download the game client by clicking on “My Account” in the upper-right of the window and then click “Pre-Order.” On your Pre-Order page, click the large button that says “Download Game Client” to begin download of the game!

If you participated in our recent Beta Testing Weekend between November 25th and 28th and still have the game client installed, you will be able to patch this client instead of re-installing by simply launching your client, logging in and allowing the download to complete. If you did not participate in the November 25th – 28th Beta Weekend, first uninstall the Game Testing Client and then re-install to ensure your game client will function correctly during Early Game Access.

Learn more about how to get ready for Early Game Access!

If you haven’t pre-ordered Star Wars: The Old Republic yet, you still have time. Visit our Pre-Order Page, secure your copy of the game and redeem your Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center to pre-load the client and qualify for Early Game Access.

If you have any issues installing or patching the game client for The Old Republic, check visit the Customer Service Support section for information and assistance.

*Customers who redeem their Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center prior to launch will be able to pre-load the Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Client before the official Game launch. Pre-loading the Game does not grant you access to the Game. Pre-Ordering the Game only allows you access to the Early Game Access period and your Color Crystal. Early Game Access may be up to 7 days. The length of your Early Game Access depends on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code. In order to continue playing the Game after the Early Game Access period, you must redeem your official Game Product Registration Code at the Code Redemption Center.

 

Plus we also got the news via the announcement that the download can now be pre-loaded!  This truly is a magical time for us, happy TORmas!

Tags: beta, early game access, launch, swtor

According to the online retailer Amazon you can now order a pre-paid 60 day time card for your account.  The price is stated as $29.99 and it shows to be released on 12-20-2011.  I do not do much shipping from Amazon so I am not really sure about their shipping times or what to expect from them but from what I have heard from friends that do they seem to be pretty reliable.

If you have pre-ordered or if you buy a physical copy on launch day you should get 30 days free game time with your initial install per account, so this is not a must have right at release day, but it still is cool to see things like this happen.  All the more evidence that SWTOR will be with us soon!

8 days and counting…

Tags: 60 days pre paid, beta, game time card, swtor

In hindsight, maybe should have done a video of this, but it’s a little too late now since beta has ended. So, I’ll have to make do with what I have now.

I’ll split this into two parts as I have way too many screens to do just a single post on this subject.

The following is what I used in beta over the past three weeks. I’ve seen countless videos and live streams where it is quite evident that the people playing have not even glanced at the functions that TOR has to offer. If you are one of those players this is for you.

These are tailered to my needs, and your’s may differ from mine, though this will serve as a good starting point for those that have not yet looked at what TOR has to offer.

Continue Reading »

 
In preparation for launch (ah, those words sound so good) there are several things happening in the SWTOR hemisphere and a lot of them involve deleting/wiping all sorts of data. Earlier today some of you may or may have not received an email suggesting you uninstall your SWTOR Beta client. Things are not as straightforward as that. It is suggested that everyone that played the beta since before November 25th should uninstall their client. Still, it is also said that if you played the beta after that date you should be able to patch up to the launch version. If you participated in the beta earlier than the Big Beta Weekend you might have a lot of leftover files that will just take up space or worse break your SWTOR installation. In that case you might want to just uninstall the damn thing and download it anew once early access downloads are available. This and more is explained in the thread posted on the official forums here.
 
While we’re on the topic of forums … the official ones will be wiped come December 10 and they will be replaced by bigger, better forums. If you want to save any private messages or important threads the time to do so is now! Among the changes there will be new forums and subforums including a community blog feature. You can read the official announcement here (before it is wiped from existence).
 
There were 750.000 unique players during the Thanksgiving Beta Test and more than two million applied for the beta out of 2.4 registered on the official swtor.com website. In case you don’t know (which means that: a) you never participated in a MMO beta before or launch; or: b) you were hiding under a rock) ALL of the characters created by those players in the beta will be wiped as the servers are prepared for launch.
 
With all the above said – 10 DAYS LEFT – before people will be able to create their first permanent characters in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Never thouhgt I’ll see the day.
 

Tags: beta, client, forum, install, uninstall, wipe

This article was submitted by a member of our community, Justin Taylor. We are happy to publish him and we hope that you the SWTOR community enjoy him as well, thank you Justin!   🙂
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With multiple beta testing sessions and some positive reviews already flowing in, Star Wars The Old Republic has already been tabbed as one of the major releases of the holiday season. Even though previews have mostly been positive, there was a bit of skepticism coming in focused on the profits for the game by the president of Activision. The assessment looks somewhat misguided; especially considering some industry analysts doubt it already.

Continue Reading »

((The RP XP with MJ #15))

This is what some RPers do in beta before trying out a Flashpoint.

 
Veetha stood as she was commanded, in the rain and darkness of Dromund Kaas while her master went inside to report to a representative of the Dark Council.

The platform on which she waited was a circular speeder taxi pad a few hundred feet in the air above the rain washed streets of the Imperial Capitol. There were no guard rails, only the speeder taxi she and Lord Tagious brought here. Veetha stood soaked, in the middle of the pad, her shoulders hunched and her fists clenched. A squat maintenance droid and its human handler stood nearby, the droid buzzing and squawking as it worked over some inane droid task. The human leaned against a short stack of crates he had yet to move inside where it was dry. He stared at her from under the dripping bill of his cap.

Veetha felt his eyes upon her, felt his hatred of her alien presence, but also felt his lust at her female form made prominent by the rain pressing her robe down against her body. She didn’t look in his direction, didn’t acknowledge him. She only waited, still, her eyes locked on the distant door.

“Whatsa matter, Rattataki?” The human shouted to her through the downpour. Distant thunder echoed his question. “Afraid of a little rain?”
Continue Reading »

Tags: roleplayers, roleplayers. rp xp with mj, RP

There are not many items that scream Star Wars more than a lightsaber. The mere sight of one can induce feelings of nostalgia and recognition in any Star Wars fan in a way that few other things can. Though in its original conception it was intended to be a weapon used by many different people in the Star Wars universe, it eventually became a tool that could only be utilized by Force Sensitive beings. To a Jedi, a lightsaber is a tool, something to help them maintain peace and to measure their attunement to the Force. For the Sith, it is a weapon, a way to impose their will on others and to serve as a symbol of their strength and superiority. The mere sight of one can stop a conflict before it begins, and those who have witnessed one in action can speak of the lightsaber’s ability to inspire allies, or cause a sense of dread in opponents.  But how were these weapons first conceived, and how do they even work? I will answer these questions for you in this week’s edition of TOR Lore. Continue Reading »

Tags: lightsaber

 
There was one fear that every BioWare and Star Wars: The Old Republic fan had about the upcoming MMO. We knew that the game would have story. We knew that it would have quality. From all the footage we’ve seen, we knew that the game would have everything a modern MMORPG had to have. We knew BioWare made good games and we were optimistic that they would deliver with SWTOR. What we didn’t know is whether BioWare’s inexperience in making Massively Multiplayer Online games would show when millions of users started playing the game. Will their server technology fail?
 
The short answer is – BioWare Won!
 
They handed out hundreds of thousands of beta keys. They invited everyone that applied within the last three years to test their game. My best guesstimate is that they had around one million beta testers hitting their servers at some point. Things were not 100 percent smooth, but they were 90 percent good. I tested how the whole beta went myself by going to a European server right from the start. These were hit very hard because there weren’t enough of them early on. I logged on the very minute the servers went live. It took about 10 minutes to get through the whole login procedure, but I got in and started playing. Things in game might not have been as smooth as they were when the regular game testing happened, but they were very playable. There were a lot of issues the first few hours and BioWare addressed as many as possible right away, trying to get every single player into the game. That is what beta testing is all about — discovering problems you weren’t aware of before. We had a patch of the launcher on Saturday and several more fixes in the meantime. In the end, BioWare passed the test of technology with flying colors. Now they have a good game and have the technology that will support all of its players.
 
Before closing this article I wanted to address one more issue. There must have been thousands, if not tens of thousands, of players that had problems during this weekend’s beta test. Based on my experience during all three days, nothing happened that was out of the ordinary. There were server disconnects and queues and login problems. All of this falls within the scope of a beta stress test. The beta was not staged so that people could fully enjoy SWTOR as a finished product. This was meant to uncover bugs that may pop up so that people may enjoy SW:TOR in December. As such, this test was a great success. Also, if they had 50,000 “unsatisfied” customers, that may seem like a huge number. In fact, that is only 5 percent out of the guesstimated 1 million testers. This is an OK number to me.
 
All I have to say in the end is Congratulations, BioWare. Our faith in you through all these years turned out to be justified. We are sorry we doubted you… at times ;).
 

In a email that was sent to the community this afternoon by Bioware we learned that the Pre Launch Guild Program will be ending soon, here is the details from the news post located here.

A few weeks ago we announced that Phase 3 of our Pre-Launch Guild Program had begun. Phase 3: Deployment allows guild members to see whether or not their guild qualifies for transfer into the game. As we approach Early Game Access for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, we want to remind all of you in guilds that the Pre-Launch Guild Program will end on December 2nd, 11:59PM CST so that guilds can be assigned to servers for Early Game Access.

This is your last chance to:

Make any changes to your guild
Ensure your guild meets requirements for deployment into the game
Designate your guild’s Allies and Adversaries
Review and accept pending guild applications

So how do you ensure that your guild makes it into the game for launch? It’s simple! All you have to do is make sure at least four members of your guild have pre-ordered the game and redeemed their Pre-Order Code at our Code Redemption Center. Once you’ve done that, you can check your guild’s page within the Guild HQ to see if you have met all of the pre-designated conditions.

If your guild does not yet qualify for transfer to the game, you still have time. Visit our Pre-Order page, secure your copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and redeem your Pre-Order Code to help ensure that your guild makes the cut for launch!

To learn more about guilds in The Old Republic, check out the Guilds Game System page for details and visit the Guilds FAQ for answers to commonly asked questions.

*Customers who pre-order Star Wars: The Old Republic will be able to play the game before the official launch. “Early Game Access” is the period of time before the official game launch when pre-order customers may access the game. Early Game Access may be up to 5 days. The length of your Early Game Access depends on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code at the Code Redemption Center. See Pre-Order FAQ for more details.

**We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that qualifying guilds are imported into a server that meets your specified preferences, but we cannot make any guarantees given the anticipated volume of guilds (among other factors). All server placements therefore remain in our sole discretion. We also cannot take responsibility for technical errors or glitches that prevent your guild from importing into the game as planned. See Terms of Service for more details.

Also here from the email is the fine print that you might be interested in reading. It has some interesting insights into the how and why of the program.

* At the end of the Pre-Launch Guild Program and before your guild is deployed to The Old Republic, guilds on the website may not be altered in any way. This includes creating/disbanding guilds, adding/removing guild members, promoting/demoting guild members, adding/removing allies and adversaries, as well as changing guild’s server type, time zone, and language preference. During this period, guilds can continue posting in their public and private forums. For more details, visit the Guilds FAQ. †Customers who pre-order Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will be able to play the game before the official launch. “Early Game Access” is the period of time before the official game launch when pre-order customers may access the game. Early Game Access may be up to 5 days. The length of your Early Game Access depends on the date and order in which you redeemed your Pre-Order Code at www.starwarstheoldrepublic.com/preorder. See Pre-Order FAQ for more details. ††We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that qualifying guilds are imported into a server that meets your specified preferences, but we cannot make any guarantees given the anticipated volume of guilds (among other factors). All server placements therefore remain in our sole discretion. We also cannot take responsibility for technical errors or system malfunctions that prevent your guild from importing into the game as planned. See Terms of Service for more details.

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Tags: guild, pre launch, swtor