Your Saga Continues

I'll be honest. I'm finding myself having a hard time bringing up any enthusiasm for TOR and haven't played in weeks. Though I'm eager to start playing my Consular, I'm waiting on a friend who I was supposed to play her together with (and that friend is likely deep into Mass Effect 3 right now; it's getting to the point where I'm just considering playing alone as I'm wasting my subscription fee like this).

But anyway, that lack of enthusiasm extends to keeping the blog updated, which in turn means I've got a rather big backlog. Particularly since last week a fair number of details from the Guild Summit were released across various sites. Add about half-a-dozen official BioWare updates and a truckload of dev tracker notes and it's a lot to get through.

So let's get to it. To start with last Friday BioWare's writer Charles Boyd posted a BioWare Community blog entry titled "Your Saga Continues: Story in Game Update 1.2". Here's an excerpt:

First, you will be called upon to return to the embattled world of Corellia, joining their faction’s forces to carry out missions in an all-new district known as the Black Hole. Refineries in the Black Hole process a rare and unstable starship fuel called hypermatter that’s necessary for all starship travel, and a critical component of fleet operations for the Republic and the Empire. Hoping to play both sides for maximum profits, a corrupt Corellian councilor has seized control of the entire district, hiring the toughest mercenaries and deadliest criminal scum available to lock down his holdings, effectively enslaving the refinery workers, and brutalizing anyone who tries to stand against him. Whether the councilor’s new regime stands will be up to you.

Read on after the break for... well a whole lot of stuff.

The Old Republic Weekend Pass

Those without a subscription to the game and without a friend playing the game already to give them a free friend trial can now still try the game for free all this coming weekend. As per the official news:

Today we are excited to announce the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Weekend Pass Free* Trial. Now for a limited time, you will be able to live out your very own Star Wars™ saga with thousands of other players for free! With the Star Wars: The Old Republic Weekend Pass Free Trial, individuals who don’t already have a previously-active Star Wars: The Old Republic account will be allowed to see a portion of what the game has to offer, free of charge, with no payment method required, for up to four days!

Individuals who take part in the Weekend Pass will be able to experience the opening adventures of each of the eight character classes in the game, exploring both their Origin World and their faction’s Capital World. Additionally, Weekend Pass players will have the chance to face off against other players in PvP Warzones, or join up with friends and play through a couple of early faction-specific Flashpoints in the game, The Esseles and The Black Talon.

The Weekend Pass Free Trial opens Thursday, March 15th, 12:01AM CT / 5:01AM GMT and ends on Monday, March 19th at 2:00AM CT / 7:00AM GMT. To learn more, visit www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com/weekendpass and come back on March 15th to create your account, download the game, and begin your free trial! Have questions? Visit the Weekend Pass FAQ.

Be sure to check back to www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com, as well as our Facebook and Twitter for all the latest updates!

There is some 'small print' in the original post as well (which I left out above). Mostly under what circumstances the offer doesn't apply to you.

Overall it's looking pretty good though. Hopefully this'll help show the game to some more players.

Not much in the way of patch notes from today's maintenance; here they are in their entirety:

1.1.5a Patch Notes

3/13/2012

Companion Characters

Bowdaar

• Resolved an issue that could occasionally prevent Bowdaar from being granted as intended. Players who had not been granted Bowdaar will now have their companion.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

Imperial

• Thus, Always, To Tyrants: Leaving The Tyrant by using the Fleet Pass will no longer cause both bulkhead doors on the Security Deck to become locked.

Game Update 1.2 Trailer

Yesterday BioWare released a trailer for the 1.2 Game Update to various news sites across the net. Here is a version from YouTube:

Next to the new Flashpoint, Warzone and Operation it shows some of the Legacy system, UI customization, appearance customization, mission tracker usability (very cool; keeps you from having to dig into your inventory for the mission tab and can just use the mission items straight from the tracker), mini pets, guild banks, and more. Overall it looks quite nice for a very hefty content update. I suspect that the video will be up on the swtor site later this week.

Read on after the break for a Facebook Q&A with Damion Schubert.

Here are the 1.1.5 patch notes:

1.1.5 Patch Notes

3/6/2012

General

• Players can now use the command /roll or /random to generate a random number between 1 and 100. This command will also accept a range (example: /roll 20-40) or a die value (example: 2d6).

Classes and Combat

General

• Moving while channeling an ability (such as Telekinetic Throw and Force Lightning) will no longer cancel the Global Cooldown, which would allow those abilities to deal more damage than intended.

Sith Warrior

• The French version of the "Darth" title is now correct.

Guild Summit and Q&A

I'm running a bit behind and there's a lot going on at the moment with TOR, with new details for the 1.2 content update and such coming out of the Guild Summit. But let's start with last Friday's Community Q&A. Here's an excerpt:

JediCarve - Will our ships ever get upgraded to include mailboxes and the Galactic Trade Network so that we will be able to access those without having to go through the process of load screens and Orbital Stations/Spaceports?

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): On one hand, we really like making the ships richer and more useful, and on the other hand, we also want to be sure that the fleets feel like vibrant centers of the game community. So the answer is... Yes! And this feature is coming as soon as Game Update 1.2 ... as ship features you can unlock as part of the Legacy system. Watch for more information about Legacy unlocks coming in Game Update 1.2 - we should be dropping that Real Soon Now.

There's definitely more on the Legacy system as they've talked a lot about that during the Guild Summit. It's nice to have mail and GTN on your ship, though I wonder if legacy points aren't better spent on something else (at least mailboxes are plentiful enough even if that makes the most sense to have on your ship). Read the rest of the questions at the original page.

Read on after the break for details on the friends trial, an interview with Gabe Amatangelo, details from the Guild Summit, information on Game Update 1.2 and the developer quotes.

A Look At The Competition Redux

Over a year and a half ago I wrote a blog post titled "A Look At The Competition", taking a look at a number of MMOs other than The Old Republic and what they were planning to do. Since then I've tried to do a redux a few times, but time never seemed right. Now, with The Old Republic having released, it seems like there will never be a better time than this.

I'll divide the list into four rough categories: "Past Releases" for MMOs that have been released since the previous blog post, "Near Future Releases" with those MMOs I expect to launch sometime in 2012 (though note that only about half the MMOs I expected to launch in 2011 actually did), "Distant Future Releases" for MMOs I expect to launch much later (2013 and on) and "Off the Radar" for MMOs I haven't heard anything about since my previous post (and might never be released) or which seem to be canceled. And just as before this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list (though I do think I've got most of the more important ones). And the information too won't be exhaustive as it's pretty much tied to my interest in a title; sometimes a title might have a fair bit of information out on it but since I've got little interest in it I haven't much to say about it.

Even so it took a good while to put this all together. I started writing well before The Old Republic was even released and thus had to regularly update the text with new information and changes. Hopefully everything is now as accurate as I can make it and hopefully you'll find the post informative. Read on after the break for the list.