No MMO is complete without mini games. SWTOR is no different. Many people were excited about BioWare’s April’s fool joke of playing virtual janitor. During the Guild Convention, they did confirm that mini games would be coming, but they have yet to announce any. While we wait, in no particular order, here are 4 mini game ideas: Swoop Racing, Gambling, Holochess and Companion PVP. More on mini games after the break.
BioWare has added all of the panel videos from 2012′s SWTOR Guild Summit meeting on youtube. Here’s a preview of one:
Be sure to check out the rest! Follow this link to find the entire Guild Summit channel.
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!
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Developers say things. But sometimes they say things that make you stop and go, “WTF?!” In recent interviews at the Guild Summit George Zoeller and Daniel Erickson said the following:
Georg Zoeller: (Source) We’re also hoping that by giving people access to the combat log, they actually get a better sense. Look at sithwarrior.com, for example. They say a lot of theories that are just plain wrong, and to be fair, how would you know better?
Daniel Erickson: (Source) They want to surface a huge amount of the information for the game. They want to be a place that you can trust the source, that they can feed stuff out so we have a standardization so people know where things are going there. I think the long term plan is sort of to be the one stop resource for all of your questions and anything that you actually want to know or need to find out how you’re going to figure out about The Old Republic.
There are some very interesting things you can take away from these quotes when looking at them together:
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 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.
Day one of the Guild Summit was all about Game Update 1.2 and the future of the Old Republic. The majority of the event was live streamed over the internet so those who did not have a chance to attend in person got to see and hear all of the great information coming out of the Summit.
Game Update 1.2 is the first major content patch for SWTOR and it’s bringing some amazing features. In fact four hours of day two are reserved for play testing 1.2. Additionally day two will feature a panel from the marketing group, and a panel on quality of life features for the game.
Overall those in attendance were pleased and excited about what was presented. Is everything getting fixed in added in Game Update 1.2? No. Game Update 1.2 is definitely a game changer, and there are more features in the pipline for 1.3 and 1.4. This game is continuing to grow and grow.
BioWare released the full schedule of events for day one of the Guild Summit. For those not attending the Summit you can watch it via live stream from the official Guild Summit site. You can also participate in the discussion via Twitter using the #SWTORSummit hash-tag. BioWare will be taking questions from online participants, as well as those in attendance.
In addition to the live stream, Force Junkies will be there to bring you updates and analysis of this exciting event.
Please note that all times are Central Standard Time (CST).
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