Yesterday BioWare announced the second official SWTOR LiveStream event, which will take place on November 29th at 3:00 PM to 3:00 PM CST. This live stream will cover the upcoming The Ancient Hypergate Game Update as well as the recent free-to-play addition. The team is asking for questions prior to the event. Questions can be submitted via Twitter, Facebook, or on the official SWTOR forums. Questions can also be asked during the actual live stream on BioWare’s LiveStream channel, which is where the event will be held.

For additional information regarding the event, please see BioWare’s announcement.

In other news, BioWare also released more information about Ancient Hypergate, the new Warzone coming in Game Update 1.6, in a recent developer blog. The developers delve into some of the strategies behind the Warzone, and show off screenshots. Here’s a snippet:

From a gameplay standpoint, Ancient Hypergate plays like a combination of a 2 point objective map, team death match, and a multi-flag game of capture-the-flag. Each of the two energy pylons is synchronized on a power cycle. At the end of this cycle, each pylon discharges energy into the gate of the faction that controls its objective point. Holding one or both of the pylons directly leads to gaining points at the end of each cycle.

For all the info, check out the latest developer blog.

This year’s Gamescom is sure to bring us a couple interesting updates about Star Wars: The Old Republic. The events kicked off yesterday, when EA held a press conference and talked about numerous games, including SWTOR. Most of what was said during the conference was information we already knew about, but one thing was confirmed– new content is on the way before the launch of the game’s new hybrid F2P model.

Specifically, we found out about three new additions: Terror from Beyond, which is a new Operation on Belsavis, Ancient Hypergate, a new PvP Warzone, and new space missions for level 50 players. Attendees of Gamescom will be able to test out Ancient Hypergate for themselves, in fact, which was previously announced on SWTOR’s official site.

Yesterday on the forums, we also received a confirmation of what kind of release schedule we’re looking at, at least as far as Terror from Beyond goes:

Originally posted by AllisonBerryman (Source)

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Hey everyone, just to be clear on what was said during the presentation – Terror from Beyond, a new Operation, is on its way next month, and we have more content updates coming after it, including the new Warzone and Space Combat Missions. We have lots of exciting new content coming!

From the sounds of it, the new content will be released in a staggered manner.

For the full EA Press Conference, check out this video. The SWTOR-specific part starts at around 51:35.

There’s so much information floating around in mmo-world that one Sith’s common sense is another Jedi’s nonsense. There are many important things you can do before ever entering combat. Although the decisions you make in combat will play the biggest role in determining your success, everyone should know these basics so as to level the initial playing field.

As I continue to research this game I bring you my discoveries of interesting need-to-know interactions, closing out the article with one such revelation. If you have any similar suggestions or basic questions you need answered, please put them in the comments.

Some people love them and some people hate. But what does Bioware think? They revamped the medal system a lot recently, and while my previous article covered the facts, here we will examine the reasoning behind the design, how it might affect rated warzones, and possible improvements.

The medal system attempts to reward players based on their individual performance, presumably while trying to win the warzone. The rewards are great enough that players often farm these medal at the cost of proper strategic play and at a detriment to their team. So the question is: do medals improve the warzone experience? Other games have successfully added individual player scoring while keeping players focused solely on winning. League of Legends Dominion map comes to mind. It may be considerably harder to design such a system in SWTOR but this is the goal. Unless of course Bioware intends players to choose between two different objectives while in warzones.

Regardless of your opinion on the medal system, you need to know how it works. There have been a lot of changes lately and there are many more old guides than new ones floating around the web. We’re going to cover just the facts so you can get up to speed. I will be coming out with a separate article about the game design intentions and consequences of the medal system where we can discuss our opinions.

Medals are awarded for completing specific feats while in a war zone. All players must earn at least 1 medal during the match to receive rewards for completing the war zone. For each of the first 8 medals that a player does earn, they are awarded an extra 250 Valor and 5 Commendations. Any additional medals are purely for vanity. You can see how many medals you currently have earned by checking your debuffs.

Originally posted by DanielErickson (Source)

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Hey folks,

There’s been a lot of discussion about the changes to the Warzone rewards system in Game Update 1.2 and the type of play style that it encourages. I wanted to help out a bit and point out a major change not all players may have noticed and share some of our plans.

First of all, rest assured we are keeping a close watch on the results of our reward changes to Warzones in 1.2 and we will continue to pull constant metrics to make sure they are going in the right direction as players get used to the new rules.

To refresh everyone’s memories, one of the most important aspects of the new changes is that your team’s performance inside the Warzone has a direct impact on a portion of the rewards you are given at the end of the Warzone. Even if your team is losing, the closer you can make the game the better your rewards will be – so don’t give up hope! Giving up and letting the other team ‘win faster’ is now the worst possible route you can take to rewards.

Secondly, one of the things we have already identified to fix is to reduce the minimum amount of medals a player must receive to gain any reward at all. Currently that value is three (3), and we are going to reduce that to only needing one (1) medal to gain rewards. This should make sure we cover that all important backfill player while still protecting against the freeloaders.

As we move forward, we will continue to meet and discuss other possible changes based on the feedback here on the Forums as well as the data coming in from the live servers. As always, we appreciate your comments and want to hear from you.

UPDATE: Keep reading for a follow up post from Daniel Erickson.

This in an introduction to the video guides I will be making in the future for Force Junkies.  This covers some Huttball tips and tactics for both the Sentinel & Marauder and other players as well.

As a heads up there was a minor sound snafu, so the into will be far louder than the rest of the video.  You’ll need to turn up your speakers after the intro finishes.  

Did you like being able to barely hear my team talking in the background during the matches?  Did you like the format of the video?  Is there something you’d like to see added or removed?  Let me know by leaving a comment here or at You Tube!

Twitter: @SkeletonJack_
Twitch TV: /skeleton_jack

When dealing with MMO’s the topic of End Game is inevitable, but the answers are not always the same.  SWTOR has been called out several times now for not having enough end game to satisfy their players.  However with three different Warzones, two different Operations, and a plethora of Daily Quests the question becomes why do players feel this way?

SWTOR removed two major components from a player’s daily grind, mats farming and reputation grinds.  These are typical staples in the average MMO.  And while you can still technically go farm up mats with a gathering skill out in the world, very few players actually do that due to the crew missions.

While some players (me included) love not having to grind out mats and reputations, this was part of why many players logged in each day between raids and pvp to work on their grind.  However in SWTOR, there’s not much to do outside of Daily Quests and PvP when on your own.  And not everyone is happy about that.

What do you think?  Was removing these grindy mechanics from the game good for SWTOR’s overall health?  Or was this a mistake?  Leave a comment below!

-Suffer Well Brothers and Sisters…

Twitters: @SkeletonJack_
Twitch TV: /skeleton_jack

The Heroes of MMO’s are not NPC’s.  They are the players.  

I’m talking about the the top 10 world ranked DPS on a boss fight, the players who live stream end game PvE and PvP content, have the best in slot gear standing in town, and the top ranked guilds in the entire world.  These are the “Heroes” of MMO’s.  And MMO Developer Teams don’t seem to realize this anymore.

The indelible fact, unmeasured by any metric that BioWare uses, is that these “Heroes” are a significant part of what inspires players to keep playing their game.  And as SWTOR is currently directed towards the casual market, they are missing out on an under utilized tool.

What to know what these tools are that are already in place?  Want to know how BioWare could cater to both the hardcore and the casuals at the same time?  You know you do.  Click on “Continue Reading”.

Alderaan is the third and final warzone released at launch for Star Wars The Old Republic. It is a three-node battleground which requires a 10 second channel to capture (recently tuned down to 8 seconds.) With the warzone only allowing 8 players per side, a lot of coordination is needed for a successful victory. Vent chat with teammates goes a long way!