Sunshine or Screenshine?

Originally posted by Bruce Maclean(Source)

Summer of SWTOR |
05.24.2013, 10:26 AM

Hello everyone,

My name is Bruce Maclean and I am a Senior Producer here at BioWare Austin. I know there have been a lot of questions around the forums about what kind of content you can expect from us this year and so I’m here today to give you all a bit of information about what we’re working on bringing to you this summer!

First up, Game Update 2.2, which is currently targeted for launch on June 11th:

• Nightmare Mode Terror From Beyond. It’s got vicious new mechanics and is definitely not for the faint of heart. I’m very excited for you to see the new gear that comes with this, which uses a new appearance system we’ve developed for armor and weapons called ‘Scrolling UVs’.
• New Guild Bonuses! Players in guilds currently receive a +5% experience bonus, but now every 5 active players in the guild will add an additional 1% bonus to XP and reputation, up to a maximum bonus of 10% each.
• Crafters can now craft Underworld gear! But don’t RE that piece if you are still using it…
• Unified fleet chat channel for each faction, for easier group finding without having to hop between instances.

We’ve seen a lot of requests for a rerun of our Double XP weekends. Well, okay! We’d like to help you stay cool in the heat of the summer with three weekends starting June 22nd and continuing through July 7th. The third and last weekend will actually start early on Thursday the 4th of July, in case you are enjoying a long Independence Day weekend.

By July 9th Ops groups will have had four weeks to cut their teeth on Nightmare Mode Terror From Beyond. That’s when we will launch Nightmare Mode Scum and Villainy as a part of Game Update 2.2.2! New mechanics and unique loot for you.

July 23rd look for a return of the Relics of the Gree Event for a nice two week long run. Per community request the Event will scaled up to level 55 on this next run!

August 6th is our target date for Game Update 2.3, which we are working on right now and will be our biggest update since 2.0. Some of the bigger parts of this update are:

• New Flashpoints
• New Daily Area
• New Recurring Event
• Significant graphical upgrades

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and we are also working on some longer term stuff. Sometimes we have been averse to discussing specific dates well in advance, because we aren’t going to release anything unless we feel it is ready to go live and we don’t want to upset folks if we move a date back. Well I think we should just tell you what date the teams are shooting for, and if we don’t hit them we’ll just tell you why. Radical thinking, I know. As we get closer we’ll have a lot more juicy details on these – keep your eyes peeled to the forums and SWTOR.com for more information. Also, for those who are curious about the next updates to PvP, I will just say… apart from minor tweaks (like stunbreak abilities cooldown being reset on death in 2.2) you should look forward to Game Update 2.4. /rubshands

Plan your days poolside and evenings rocking the Galaxy!

I’m gonna do something different thing week. Instead of writing some long-winded piece on healing in general, I’m going to respond to some questions I got through my YouTube channel.

I post SWTOR boss fight videos there every so often and one player sent me some pretty good questions about operative healing. I sent him a response with some quick answers. Here is my advice after spending some time to really think about things. Please feel free to help me help this person. Send in any questions you might have.

A battle hardened Knight once said, “…many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” These are mine.

How many of an MMO’s player base actually participate in End Game Group Content?

Why don’t more players participate?

Keep reading to ponder with me.

A battle hardened Knight once said, “…many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” These are mine.

The vocal minority is making sure the interweb hears how upset they are about SWTOR’s Cartel Market and so called broken promises about subscriptions from the Devs. It all surrounds this post from Jeff Hickman concerning the introduction of the F2P model.

Apparently he stated that subscribers would retain unlimited access to SWTOR content. Well comrades, unlimited depends on your point of view.

Along with that thought, I can’t help but think the vocal MMO minority doesn’t realize what type of genre we are playing these days. Read along for my point of view.

It’s time to scrounge up all those Grey Helix components. The event returns next week, for ONE WEEK ONLY.

I wonder what gear Xeno will drop?

/Cheers

Tanks are expected to know all content and push the group forward without hesitation. Great Tanks have to start somewhere, this is one of those places. Here we’ll examine the ins and outs of being a Professional Tank.

Last week I tossed out an Endurance stat of ‘Over 40k’ in the Professional Tank column. This was in reference to augmenting for Fortitude only. I received some quick feedback on optimal Tank Gearing stats. Apparently the ‘correct’ way to gear does not include stacking HP.

I have four level 55 toons. Two are healers, the others are DPS.

With the exception of my “main”, I leveled those almost entirely through PVP. Hell, I haven’t even finished my Imperial Agent storyline and he’s healing HM Scum & Villainy.

The point is that I have pretty good experience with healing PVP. But something happened this weekend that really made me realize I forgot how rubbish it is to be a lowbie PVP healer early in that toon’s progression.

Players start or join a guild for many different reasons. Friends creating a guild together, an Elder Game player joins a progression guild or players band together for PvP. I’ve even seen one-player guilds just for the vault space. Whatever the reason, guilds can be the one thing that keeps a player coming back.

This morning I read a Guild Leadership focused blog with the title “Command Decisions”. Marjor Snarl’s posts are well thought out and parallel many of the same points I work on daily.

I disagree on his latest blog with his view of a Guild not being a ‘Business.’ In fact this is in direct opposition on how I run the SWTOR Zergadins. If I didn’t take a business man’s point of view to leading this group we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Tanks are expected to know all content and push the group forward without hesitation. Great Tanks have to start somewhere, this is one of those places. Here we’ll examine the ins and outs of being a Professional Tank.

With my work scheduled skewed toward late nights I’ve found myself tanking in the early mornings. These late night runs have reinforced what it means to be a Professional Tank. Level 55 Hard Mode flash points aren’t anything if not Tanking trainers. Every trash pull could use a cooldown and every boss can wipe you if not tanked correctly. While the gimmicks are basic, an unprepared tank will find themselves face down on the decking in an instant.

I hoard raid footage. Prior to cleaning out my hard drive I found clips going back to the first Eternity Vault HM clear and some stuff from when we were running flashpoints every day for Columi drops.

A look through my files revealed raid videos of every operation in SWTOR and multiple files of just about every boss.

There were tons of wipes, several boss kills, and a long list of really good people who I’ve since lost contact with.

Why, though, did I have so many videos? I tend to record most of my raids for both boss kill videos and for a critical look at how I did, regardless of the end result.