Everyone’s talking about the Legacy 1.2 Patch.  And who’s to blame you for that?  It’s exciting stuff!  But before everything else gets lost to the wayside, let’s start talking about a few things you really can’t miss out on from last week’s Dev Posts and the Weekly Q&A.

Need to know about your last chance at a white power crystal?  Want to know exactly how crafting changes impacts what you can make in 1.2?  Interested in the SWTOR Dev Team plan for future content releases?  Click that Continue Reading Button!

At the Guild Summit BioWare announced that they will be releasing a combat log in the 1.2 Legacy Patch.  This will show you everything that you do, or is done to you, with detailed information covering even exact threat numbers.  This will be viewable in game and can be written to text file for parsers as well.  You can check it out now on the PTR.

This means that Damage Meters are here.  These combat logs can be parsed by external software to show real time damage meters for yourself in game.  Two notable examples of these are ACT and Rift Combat Parser.

The following loot list is for normal mode The Red Reaper, which is a flashpoint for levels 43-47. All bosses are listed in the order of occurrence. Trash drops are at the end. Some of the drops in Red Reaper seem to drop off multiple bosses. I’ve listed some of the possible occurrences. There may be more.

Loot lists are currently a work in progress. If you notice anything that needs a correction or addition, please feel free to leave a comment.

The Old Republic’s portrayal of the Sith Warrior and the Jedi Knight brings with it the use of lightsaber forms. Each advanced class has the opportunity to specialize in some of these forms, each with its own benefits. Though the game gives us no visual difference between the forms, each fighting style brings its own style that can say a lot about a character’s personality. Iconic characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had styles that mirrored their own personalities. Your Sith Warrior or Jedi Knight’s style can often say more about your character than their back story can.

Jump past the to see how some of these lightsaber styles can form a great foundation for a new character.

I discuss story pretty often in these columns. It’s one of my gaming guilty pleasures, and BioWare just does it so dang well. It’s hard to not sit up and take notice from time to time, especially when the story standing out is in an MMO, 99% of which have the premises of Death and Destruction™, complete with boring enemies, flashy gryphon mounts, and really loud dragons. Yeah, screw the dragons. I’ll take Star Wars: The Old Republic and Kaliyo’s interesting yet crazy way of looking at things.

SWTOR isn’t bursting with companion story content. In fact, I’d consider it a small facet of a character’s overall story. But it has a large impact for many players, including myself, who love the ways in which companion interactions can breathe life to the normal questing grind. BioWare took a lesson from its single-player games here, and realized that players like their party members and companions to have opinions and personalities. Companions aren’t the pets WoW’s looking for (see what I did there?).

The following loot list is for normal mode Taral V, which is a Republic-side flashpoint for levels 31-35. All bosses are listed in the order of occurrence. Trash drops are at the end. Many of the drops in Taral V seem to drop off multiple bosses. I’ve listed some of the possible occurrences. There may be more.

Loot lists are currently a work in progress. If you notice anything that needs a correction or addition, please feel free to leave a comment.

With the Guild Summit upon us, many players are excited to hear about the possibilities for the future of The Old Republic and eager to give their opinions. But let us look further for a moment, to the possibilities that the future may hold in an expansion. It is well known that the developers chose not to use exotic races in SWTOR due to the fact that being a Mon Calamari or Bith is a far different experience than the difference between a Zabrak and a Human. Species like those have their own stories to tell.

In which case, these races would be considered their own class by Bioware, with their own stories. And what better pair of species to pit against each other than the Wookies and the Trandoshans? Jump past the cut to explore these interesting races and how they can fit into The Old Republic.

The Guild Summit is officially over. The second half of day two was dedicated to play testing Game Update 1.2, and a feedback session. There really wasn’t much time to get a feel for everything coming in 1.2, but when asked how they generally felt about 1.2, everyone in the room exclaimed – ‘Excited!”

All-in-all a great time was had by everyone and most left with a very positive feeling about where this game is headed. Game Update 1.2 doesn’t solve every issue, but it is a giant step in the right direction. Here are some of the highlights from the feedback session.

The morning session of day two of the Guild Summit is now over. The morning session included a discussion with the marketing team and a quality of life features discussion. While the topics were not as “sexy” as day one, the attendees were no less passionate in asking questions than they were yesterday.

This is probably a tough group when it comes to marketing. They’re like Toydarians – marketing doesn’t work on them, only game features. Everyone here is already passionate about the game and willing to spend their own personal money to participate in events like this. The folks here are in it for the long haul.

Ask Mr. Robot is an amazing tool available both on the internet and as a mobile app (UPDATE: For now the mobile app is WOW only, but we’ve been told that one for SWTOR may be in the works!).  And right now is your chance to check it out as they expand from supporting WoW to SWTOR as well.  This should prove to be one of the most useful tools for character optimization available.

If you’d like to take a peek at what is possible you can go look at my armory for Skeletonjack with my current spec (Ops/PvP hybrid) in all of my customized Operations gear.  The only thing I left out was my Datacrons as I never wrote down the ones I’ve picked up.

Want to see the customizations available?  Want to know about the mobile app and the character item comparisons?  Want to know how it will tell you what gear will be an upgrade for you?  Click on that “Continue Reading” button.  Mr. Robot saves 100 kittens every time you do!!