Well after the news of the EU followers will be at long last getting some testing invites, Stephen Reid dropped the bombshell that there will be no beta for this coming weekend Sept 9 – 11. Also it should be noted that BioWare did not intend to send out beta invites for every weekend which we kind of amused would be the case.

Which is a shame as the 9th will be my 40th birthday, darn I’m getting old. I was in my mid 30’s when I started following TOR :'(

StephenReid

Hello all,

There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we’re not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.

Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic. That build won’t be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.

That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we’ll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.

We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn’t mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we’ll be inviting many more people in.

While many of you are excited and anxious to know what’s happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we’re not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.

In the past couple of days we’ve been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We’ll post that tomorrow – in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.

So depending on how the real time testing goes with the new build we may or may not have more invites the week after. Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly or it could be a very long wait till TOR finally hits the stores.

Today on the official forums we got this update from Chris Collins,

As promised, we have an update on the batch of Game Testing invites being sent to players in the EU.

After a lengthy discussion here at the BioWare offices, the decision has been made to postpone the proposed Game Testing invites for EU players for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.

Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.

For those of you that may have missed the messages we put out on the subject already, last week saw a number of issues arise with key systems that prevented us from sending out invites to EU players. Had everything gone to plan, we would have been able to offer two weeks of testing time to new users. However, given the issues that arose, this was physically not possible.

So while we understand that this news may not be what a lot of you wanted to hear today, we hope that you’ll understand our position. Given the news of this new build, it’s now more important than ever that we invite European players into the Game Testing environments, so you have my word that this batch of invites will happen, it may just mean you just have to wait a little longer.

It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.

As ever, as soon as I get any firm news around the matter, I’ll make sure to update everyone.

Tags: beta, bioware, friday update, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

((The RP XP with MJ))

First, a quick thank you to everyone who responded to my first article, “A Jedi Walks Into a Bar….” It’s great to see so much response to my intro and the subject of RP. In fact, I was so moved by the awesome questions and comments, I decided to jump the gun on Friday’s article and give you something else to chew over until then. If you’re new to RP, this is for you.

Four Imperial soldiers stood in formation on the action deck of the destroyer Shroud. Only one of them would be chosen for promotion and a field assignment that would grant limitless power through complete autonomy. Only one would be given the position of Imperial Agent.

As the colonel approached to inspect the four officers, each one stiffened even more than they already were.

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Tags: character, Roleplay, RP, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

All fun aside and in all seriousness, today I have the pleasure of Introducing our latest featured writer to the site and the launch of our newest weekly column, “The RP XP” written by our newest staff member “MJ”.

Here at the offices of Swtor-Life we have been trying to decide which area of game play and related topics would be best for us to branch out into for you the community.  You are the heart and soul of why we do this.

We have the normal news style posts about SWTOR like most fan sites do, rehashed from fan site to fan site but, it is still necessary to get that out there to you. We have some funny and witty articles, we have some specialized content focusing on specific areas of game play like crew skills and in game economics to class focused content.

We are pretty well rounded as is but we wanted to add more. We want to add something else that’s specialized in nature, but of a different direction than we have taken you in the past. We want to chart unexplored space here at Swtor-Life while we ride the train leading up to launch and beyond.

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Tags: bioware, community, gameplay, role playing, roleplaying, RP, star wars, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

The Twi’lek smuggler looks up from her drink and smiles toward the man in the robes and armor.

The Jedi Knight catches her eye and nods a polite greeting before turning his attention to the row of bottles behind the bar.

Taking her drink, the smuggler moves closer to him, her eyes casually taking in the bar, the colorful crowd, careful not to linger on the Jedi. She stops close to him, close enough to be heard in a whisper but not overheard by anyone else. She faces the dance floor and leans back on the bar with her elbows. “You’re Kendris?”

The Jedi purses his lips and studies his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “You’re sloppy,” he says just above a whisper.

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Tags: MJ, MMO, role play, Roleplay, roleplayers, RP, RPers, swtor

After the initial announcement of the start of beta weekends at PAX Prime there were still many unanswered questions that remained. Stephen Reid, Senior community manager, tweeted some of the final answers just now. Here’s a summary of the most important information pertaining to the first SWTOR beta weekend:
 

• Most likely, all of the invites for the first beta testing weekend have already been sent out. If you haven’t received an email yet or it is not in your spam folder you will not get in this weekend. (source)
• No EU testers have been invited for the first beta testing weekend (however a huge batch of beta testers from Europe will be invited in the next few days to regular Game Testing)
• NDA is still in effect so people should not talk about the game impressions in public
• The First Beta weekend starts on Friday, September 2nd
• As it stands now, people that were invited for the first beta weekend will not partake in subsequent beta weekends
• Invited players are being picked at random from those that applied for testing at swotr.com
• Pre-Order status has no effect on your chance to be invited to the beta testing weekend

 
I hope this helps answer some of your questions.
 

Tags: beta weekend, testing

One of my absolute favorite reveals of Pax Prime came from the Sunday presentation in the main theater. Of course Darth Hater was there and they did a outstanding job of covering it for us that could not attend, they brought us the scoop on what the Developers are referring to as open world pvp. It looks fun, it looks exciting for sure!

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Tags: beta, bioware, gameplay, Ilum, open world pvp, PvP, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

One of the nice little tidbits that I just found that came out of PaxPrime this weekend thanks to Kristen Archer of Torwars.com was this tasty little morsel about the possibility for gambling in Star Wars The Old Republic MMO.  Courtesy of an interview that Video Nvidia did with Cory Butler.  At about 3 minutes in we get this question and very interesting answer from Cory,

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Tags: beta, bioware, event, interview, PAXPrime, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

We have have very little in the way of new info when it comes to TOR of late. Huttball is the only thing since the map update, which in itself was not well received by the TOR faithful.

Before that you would have to cast your mind back to the 10th of June when we got the  Game play Features news article. This is the last new info we had.

Though we can not forget the sneaky update on the crew skills that almost went unnoticed.

GamesCom did bring Huttball and for me one of the better features that TOR has to date, this was followed by a lack-luster PAX where we just had info that some may find new but these things have been said before.

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Tags: beta, bioware, gamescom, star wars the old republic mmo, swtor

During the Star Wars: The Old Republic panel at PAX Prime convention held in Seattle it was revealed that previously announced beta weekends in September will already start on the first weekend – September 2nd. There will be a huge wave of new beta invites going out for this beta weekend to new beta testers. This beta test will be held on a new server, different from the one being used for game testers currently in the beta. Huge number of people will be invited in all subsequent September beta weekends. You need to be signed up for beta testing on the official swtor site, if you want to have a chance for an invite into this beta weekend. We’ll see if we can get more news and details posted soon.