You have a brand new lightsaber and you really want to drive home the news to the opposite faction players. Seeing them in an occasional warzone isn’t enough, you want those PvEers to know too. Reputation is important right?

Or maybe your on the other side of the coin. There is a brand new lightsaber repeatedly striking at your head. Don’t these guys have something better to do than stop me from doing my dailies? Actually no we don’t. Queue times are long and Ilum is abandon. It’s up to us to make our own world PvP. Why to gank, where to gank, and how to not get ganked.

Find out how after the break!

“There’s Merc’s in them there hills.”

The Outlaw’s Den was intended to be an active world PvP zone but became just another part of the desert when the designers removed all of the loot. Now the Mercenary Commendations are back and I’ve got the guide on how to get them.

For those not familiar with The Outlaw’s Den, it is a free-for-all PvP zone. You can attack, and be attacked by, anyone not in your party. There is an entrance for each faction. In the middle of the area is a building with an auction house and mailbox almost begging people to let their guard down. There are also 3 PvP vendors scattered around who sell unique speeders.

We have been asking for a customizable user interface (UI) for a while now, and in 1.2 we will be getting it. The new UI allows everything on your screen to be resized, flipped and moved, but is it enough?

The customizable UI allows for a fair deal of customization, but it is still limited. For starters, there is no way to add extra bars or remove portraits. BioWare has made a good attempt at giving players better UI customization, but it still falls short of what players want and can achieve through mods.

One of the coolest game update 1.2 additions is the ability to finally customize SWTOR’s player user interface (UI). This feature has been asked for since early beta, and it’s easy to understand why. Most modern MMOs all have ways to tailor the UI to meet a player’s needs. A good UI is helpful for so many reasons, and can be crucial to all types of gaming playstyles.

In today’s MMO world, options are important. This is especially the case when it comes to a player’s UI. Luckily, BioWare finally got the hint and gave us our customization options. The feature is available for player testing on the PTS server currently. After playing with it a bit, I decided to write a basic primer on some of its features and options.

In a recent interview at the Guild Summit Georg Zoeller had this to say:

Georg Zoeller: (Source) I don’t think three Operations is optimal; you probably want to go at least four or five but that’s not necessarily my call. That is Gabe’s call and everyone else who is involved, but we need to build a nice state of endgame. We’re building up and yes, at some point you have the discussion “which point do we have an accessibility problem?” You need to be able to get new blood in there.

If you’re not sure what he’s talking about, they announced that the 3 modes for Operations will now be Story Mode, Hard Mode, and Nightmare Mode. The 1.2 Legacy Patch will release a new Operation that has a Story Mode and a Hard Mode only. Sometime in the future, most likely 1.2.1 or 1.2.2, Nightmare Mode will be released as well.

In addition to this they will be adding new mechanics to Hard Mode (not new animations), and Nightmare Mode will also have additional mechanics beyond Hard Mode.  They said that Nightmare needed to be a nightmare.  If you missed my article, The Heroes of MMO’s, I talk about some of the changes that needed to be made and are in fact currently in the pipeline for release.

What’s amazing about Georg’s statement is that he recognizes and sees that the range of player skill and need for challenge can’t be neatly quantified by three simple degrees.  That in fact to reach everyone equally they need a more diverse scaling method to satisfy all of their players.  I for one am truly impressed with that level of foresight and open mindedness.

But what about you guys?  What do you think of having possibly four to five different Modes for Operations?  Keep in mind that all Operations are intended to be on the same lockout except for Story Mode (the easiest setting), so you’d only be doing one “difficult” Ops each week.  Leave a comment below telling us what you think!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

Twitters: @SkeletonJack_
Twitch TV: /skeleton_jack

I put off writing this article as I was trying to do more research to prove my theory wrong; however the Dev Blog by Georg Zoeller today laid down the cement for this in the 1.2 Patch.  So if you read that post you may be already guessing that this is tied directly to the gear and crafting system.

This may or may not be an inherent flaw, but this points to BioWare spending a great deal of resources on potentially unused content that will go into the game.  What is this potential flaw to the crafting and end game loot system?  Click Continue Reading.

Jedi Guardians will be familiar to anyone who has played a sword-and-shield warrior-type tank class in any MMORPG. They are the traditional melee tank relying on a combination of absorption, avoidance, and mitigation to successfuly tank content.

As the Jedi Knight you will start your journey as a Jedi Padawan on the planet Tython, the starting world of the Jedi Knight and Consular. As a Jedi Padawan you are expected to pass the Jedi Trials before being promoted to the rank of the Knight.

Upon reaching level 10, you will be able to choose an Advanced Class (AC) from the Jedi Advance Class trainer near the Combat Training section of Carrick Station. To play the “Tank” role in a group, you must pick the Guardian Specialization as your AC choice. After choosing your AC you will be able to equip heavy armor and use a shield generator to maximize your mitigation. When you pick the Guardian AC, you will receive your first shield generator for free. The Guardian Specialization opens up three skill trees where you can spend your skill points. Skill points are earned at the rate of one point per level for a maximum of 41 points. The three skill trees are Defense, Focus, and Vigilance. Defense is the Tank tree; Vigilance is the DPS tree optimal for Player Versus Environment (PVE); and Focus is the DPS tree optimal for Player Versus Player.

BioWare holds a long tradition of developing games with romantic, story-rich content that all gamers can appreciate. The LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer) gaming community and its allies, especially, tends to take special notice to many of BioWare’s games because of the way in which the developers introduce and develop LGBT characters, NPCs, and relationships. BioWare isn’t afraid to create worlds and societies that focus on love and equality between all races and genders.

Most romantic relationships in BioWare games tend to be more realistic than in many games, and romance-able characters themselves tend to have fully-developed personalities and aren’t just stereotypical tacked-on additions. This is also the case for LGBT characters in BioWare games. LGBT content in video games is still fairly rare, although other games like Skyrim, Fable, the Sims, and others have joined BioWare in creating it. Same-gender representation in the gaming world is not only good for the LGBT community but is one step closer to equality.

In order to get the Ilum daily quest series, you have to complete your class quest, which should send you right to assist the war effort in Ilum. When you tire of being farmed by the Imperials on your server, you might take a moment to check out all this PVE content people have been raving about. Something about Darth Malgus yadda yadda yadda, skip to the end…Daily Commendations you say? Credits you say? Sign me up sir, it’s time for the second set of dailies!

If it’s your first time planetside, you’ll end up doing all the below quests as you advance through the initial questline in addition to about a dozen others that set up the plotline for the final two flashpoints. Once you complete this you’ll be able to repeat all the quests every day.

Again, there are bonus quests associated with many of the quests, but they don’t reward anything other than Legacy experience at level 50, so they’re not entirely worth the effort.

Ah, dailies. Both the bane and boon of the fresh 50. You’ll come away from dailies with two main things: boatloads of cash and daily commendations. These are both vital to the fresh 50 gearing process, as there is a surprising amount of easily purchased gear from the GTN that will put you in a great position for hard mode flashpoints.

In order to start the daily quests there’s one thing you need to do: complete your class quest on Corellia. Once you finish your class quest you’ll be directed towards Ilum with a quest called “The Crystal Ball”. In addition, there will be an NPC on the fleet who will direct you towards Belsavis. You don’t need to be 50 to get either quest (I recommend starting them at 49.5, as you’ll unlock all your dailies when you hit 50).