It’s Halloween and everyone is enjoying a good scare. To celebrate, Joanne Laroche invite The Old Republic fans to post their Halloween Star Wars related costumes on the swtor.com forums. The best costumes will be featured in the upcoming Fan Friday and we took the liberty of singling out a few of these in the gallery bellow.
One very scary photo was submitted among the family friendly pictures. The costume is in fact so scary that we have to recommend caution to all those with weak hearts or even good taste. We are not sure whether this is an actual forum user or just a random image from one of the star wars conventions, but the scare factor is there nevertheless, which makes it a perfect Halloween image.
One of the more interesting classes of the Sith Empire got some Friday Update love yesterday. Imperial Agent is a mix of stealth, healing and high DPS, which is not something you see often in a class. The agent can specialize to be an Operative for close range combat/healing option or a Sniper for all you “assassination from stealth” type of players. Furthermore we found out that the starship you will be flying as the agent is X-70B Phantom-Class Prototype (very slick looking). Your “trusted” companion will be the petite, yet very tantalizing Kaliyo Djannis. Just to make this information-full Friday update even more rich we are treated with the Holonet page about the Chiss race that is apparently a natural pick for Imperial Agent players.
This Friday update also brings us back on track with information rich updates that the SWTOR community is longing for and we hope this trend continues. Enjoy the Imperial Agent Class Trailer:
If you ever wanted to find out who is behind these article and this site you have a chance to find out more by listening to the interview Vall from Tor Syndicate did with yours truly. I apologize up front for the nasty accent and all the language errors, but my speaking English is a bit rusty. I would like to thank the Tor Syndicate for this extraordinary experience and for all of their work in bringing the TOR community together. You can listen to the entire Tor Syndicate podcast that contains the interview by clicking here.
The Old Republic fans are a bunch of people in love. They are in love with the concept behind the game Bioware is making. Star Wars universe populated by you and your friends in which everyone gets to be a hero. How can you blame them? That is why the moment someone mentions that there could be any kind of trouble with the game there are cries of terror showing up all over the official forums and fansites. There are several things that happened simultaneously these past few weeks that caused the current wave of doomsayers. We wanted to address these in this two part editorial describing the causes in part one, that you are reading now, and offering some explanations and suggestions in part two that will follow shortly.
Causes
During the convention season we were treated with loads of new game information. For the first time people were able to sit down and play the game. We also saw some higher level gameplay footage for the first time and were shown Revan’s dungeon. Space ships and advanced classes were also explained in detail. Following up on all that info we were also given a lot of info about the Smuggler and the Jedi Knight. Next three updates were about a planet, biographies and a timeline. If it was any other time of the year these would be enough, but after the eventful convention season all of it feels lackluster.
Advertised release date is getting very close. Here’s the math that is scaring fans. Everyone is expecting the game to come out in April, May the latest. Any date later than that is unexpected (even May is cutting it close) because summer is dead season. This gives us 6 months tops before the game’s release. Based on Bioware’s own policy that they don’t talk about it before its done people are thinking the following: “If they are not talking about so many core systems that means they are not done yet. Will they be done by release (in such a short period of time)?”. And MMORPG gamers are already tired of all those rushed out releases that ruined so many potentially great projects (who said Warhammer online, Age of Conan, Star Trek Online, APB – OMG are there that many?)
EA Louse. He is a “whistle blower” from inside Mythic (the makers of Warhammer online) that whines about how life ain’t fair and how management is to blame for WAR failing and him losing his job. Since Bioware and Mythic are both parts of EA and some parts of Mythic started helping out with SWTOR some time ago he made a statement about SWTOR. According to him the project already spent 300 million dollars and that it will be the biggest failure in the history of video games. This coming from a guy that works on a game that spent $50 million and has 100k subscribers right now.
There is a rumor floating around that at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference people were saying that there is trouble in TOR land and Bioware is flying people into Austin office to help out.
Enough to put anyone caring about the game into full on panic mode, right? Fear not fellow TOR fans, there are two sides to every story and we will be going in depth on The Cures in our Part 2 of this article tomorrow.
After a news-full convention season things have calmed down to the point where regular Friday updates, that the SWTOR community team releases regularly, are becoming a source of frustration rather than source of much needed revelation. In the past weeks we had a new playable planet, Ilum, revealed. We got to view a new entry in Timeline holorecord about the fall of Exar Kun. This Friday was October Fan Friday filled with great community creations, another developer corner and some new avatars and smileys (Ithorians are so cool I had to include the image of the smileys above) for the official forums. Some new character biographies were also revealed.
Guess what – no one seem to care! The community is in a bit of an uproar. With the advertised release date looming ever closer (6-8 months) people are starting to be anxious wanting to find out about core and important game mechanics. We are still missing info on most advanced classes specifics, detailed combat mechanics, end game options, playable species, PvP, crafting, companion mechanics and this is just to name a few of the more important things. Why does the community think that revelation of this information ASAP is so important?
I remember both World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online had extensive closed beta tests for up to a year prior to game’s launch. In these tests rather large portions of the most dedicated members of the community and beta testers constantly provided in depth feedback, based on which developers modified their concepts. Whether this just meant tweaks or completely abandoning certain features it was all done before things were set in stone. With only 6-8 months remaining before the game is supposed to hit the shelves and none of this community-development process interaction happening people are becoming worried. By the way, LOTRO had one of the most successful MMO launches in the history (not in numbers, but in stability and richness of content and features) and we all know about WoW.
We just received a mysterious message through our contact us form and it seems we are not the only Swtor fans to get it. The official forum is full of people that got it as well. The message reads as follows:
Subject: ## Incoming Transmission from a faint signal…
Message Body:
## Incoming Transmission from an old Republic signal…
## Initiating trace
## Signal cannot be located!
## Receiving transmission burst…
“where it all began…in a Violent display, lIght meets dark…GrEat
power still remaiNs hERE”
YMESCJMFXZWTGYEUSGMUHLWTARYVIEMFKLSBGC
## End Transmission
## Signal lost!
## Attempting reconnect…
## Searching…
## Searching…
## Would you like to continue searching for the signal…?_
There is a cipher that decodes the upper cryptic sequence of characters. To help you out right away, the key you need to start deciphering is tython. This will lead you on a great adventure with a lot of puzzles and brain breakers. The most intriguing part for me was the use of a cipher seen in KOTOR, which shows great knowledge of the creators of this puzzle.
May you be warned that this is not something created by Bioware and there is no beta access as reward at the end of the path (and that is why everyone spent hours on this trying to solve it). Nevertheless it is a great experience and I suggest you test your intelligence by this great game. If you get stuck you can ask in the comments and we’ll give tips, or you can visit the thread started on the official forums and browse through 50+ pages for solutions :).
I admit, I expected a smuggler update last Friday and I was wrong. I admit, I did not expect the smuggler update this Friday and that is exactly what happened. And what an update it is!
We have the Smuggler page in the Holonet updated with his specializations and new videos and screenshots.
There is also a page on the smuggler’s bad-ass Wookie associate (companion character), Bowdaar, also known as “The Killer from Kashyyyk”. The winner of 10,000 death matches in the arena got his own holonet page in the biographies section.
Just to make things as interesting as possible we are also introduced to smuggler’s spaceship – Corellian XS Stock Light Freighter. There is a brand new video showcasing the spaceship and we can see several NPCs occupying it. Presumably these are the other smuggler companion characters and one of them seems to be a Mon Calamari! You can watch the video bellow or in our YouTube channel or on the official starship page.
If you thought that is all you were wrong. We also learn that you will be able to make a Twi’lek smuggler and because of that we are presented with an official Twi’lek inhabitants page on the Holonet. Visit it to learn about their natural beauty and charm and what are ‘lekku’ (those head tails they have), and also you can find out why there are so many slave Twi’leks around.
I have a lot of convention news withdrawal. I was spoiled by the convention season and the constant stream of news coming our way. It fed the hole created by not being in the SWTOR beta. Luckily, SWTOR fansites are plentiful and have great articles and content for you to browse through on a dreaded Monday and we are here to list it all for you.
To round up the convention related news we have a bit of late news from SWTOR Station and their Gamescom coverage. They just released a new video from Gamescom that shows Daniela & Hergen (French/German Community Manager) and some speeders in action as well as Hutta’s spaceport video footage. Visit SWTOR Station for the full article and you can watch the video bellow:
Galactic Holofeed has entered its 1 year of SWTOR podcasts. Suzina and Kalvod guide us through their impressions of the Designing the Light Side Developer Dispatch and speculate in their knowledgeable and informed way about the Smuggler abilities. Clicking here will take you to their site and the Transmission 52 article.
Despite what was expected, this Friday update was not the Smuggler trailer video released earlier yesterday by Machinima.com. Instead we got a huge update containing a great “Designing the Light Side” Developer Dispatch video and a huge Fan Friday article containing a huge amount of fan created content.
The video is full of information on what decisions were made during the design process of the Jedi classes. We find out that you can choose to be a heroic type of Jedi like Luke or darker, more avenging Jedi like Anakin. There is a bunch of video footage of Tython (still one of the most serene environments I’ve seen in any game so far) along with discussion on why choosing earth tones for Jedi and “robed monk” look. Jedi Knight is all about action and adventure. Consular’s story will be more about diplomacy and you will be able to play a sneaky (stealth) role, or a more supportive (healing) role or even do some force damage (magic dps). The problem I have with each of these videos is that every time they release a new one I have to rethink what class I’m going to play as my main. I just have a need to live through all these stories and not miss out and that is going to be hard with 8 classes available. Anyone with a cloning machine wanna help me out? You can find the official video page here or just watch it below.
Along with the Developer Dispatch article we were also presented with this month’s Fan Friday. I recommend everyone visits the official news post, because it has loads of great Fan made art along with some great looking capital ship concept art presented in another Developer Corner. New wallpapers and official forum avatars are presented as well.
Guys at Machinima.com just released a Smuggler class trailer video as part of their new show called Machinima Realm. They got the privilege to release this video a day ahead of everyone else, which probably means that this video was going to be this Friday’s update. The question is: now that the Friday update has been released on a Thursday, what news will I post tomorrow? Despite my editorial troubles, you should enjoy the video. the video shows some smuggler gameplay and I think first shots of how stealth will work and what it will look like. Oh, and there’s a Wookie involved (do I smell a companion character for our Han Solo prototype?). There is a nice dissection of the video over at JediArchiveOnline.com for all you detail loving fans out there. One more thing before the video, there seems to be no “kick in the groin” action in the smuggler trailer, which kind of sucks. We all know its the best move by a video game character, like, EVAR!!!!1one11eleven!
>
