Global Cooldown & Community Q&A

Last week BioWare posted two articles, one taking a look at the upcoming changes to the cooldown UI and the other answering a number of questions from the community. Here is an excerpt from the first article:

Our UI team took this feedback to heart and worked up a solution which gives every player a lot more choices in how cooldown animations are displayed. If you're happy with the way the game currently looks, you can ignore these changes - but we think some of these preferences will be welcomed by many players.

Currently, these new preferences are scheduled to be added to the game in patch 1.1.4, which should be available for preview on the Public Test Server next week and deploying to the live servers soon afterwards.

Here's a screenshot of the new portion of the User Interface section of the Preferences menu which deals with cooldown settings, and some details on the options available to you.

I've had little trouble with the changes to the cooldown UI, but I know that a lot of people where unhappy with them. So for a lot of people these shoudl be welcome changes. And heck, I quite like the idea of adding a countdown text to the cooldowns so that I don't have to hover over skills with longer cooldowns to see how much longer I have to wait. Read the full description in BioWare's blog post.

Read on after the break for the Community Q&A, a few other bits and the developer quotes.

50!

As of yesterday evening I got my (first) character to level 50!

That makes Star Wars: The Old Republic the second MMO (not counting Guild Wars) in which I've reached maximum level (the first one being Age of Conan).

Here are some other facts about the number 50 (and the year 50) that you might not know:

• 50 (fifty) is the natural number following 49 and preceding 51.
• 50 is the smallest number that is the sum of two non-zero square numbers in two distinct ways: 50 = 1² + 7² = 5² + 5². It is also the sum of three squares, 50 = 3² + 4² + 5². It is a Harshad number.
• There is no solution to the equation φ(x) = 50, making 50 a nontotient. Nor is there a solution to the equation x - φ(x) = 50, making 50 a noncototient.
• The aliquot sum of 50 is 43 and its aliquot sequence is (50,43,1,0). Fifty is itself the aliquot sum of 40 and 94.
• 50 is the atomic number of tin.
• 50 is the fifth magic number in nuclear physics.
• In Kabbalah, there are 50 Gates of Wisdom (or Understanding) and 50 Gates of Impurity.
• 50 is the traditional number of years in a jubilee period.
• There are 50 states in the United States of America. The TV show Hawaii Five-O is so called because Hawaii is the 50th state.
• 50 years of marriage is the gold or "golden" wedding anniversary.
• Year 50 started on a Thursday (same day of the week as this post).
• Year 50 was known as the Year of the Consulship of Vetus and Nerullinus (before Anno Domini became in use in the early medieval period).
• In year 50 Cologne was raised to the status of a city.
• In year 50 Romans learned to wash themselves with soap.
• In year 50 the Dutch city of Utrecht, where I got my university diploma (a bit later), was founded.
• In year 50 the Romans built the (first) London Bridge across the Thames out of wood.
• In year 50 the African Great Lakes were discovered by the Greek explorer Diogenes.
• In year 50 Cai Lun, Chinese inventor of paper and the papermaking process, was born.
• The Asterix comics are all set in the year 50 BC.

So you can see that the number 50 is quite a distinguished one and I am proud to add my characters level to that accomplished list.

1.1.2 Patch Notes

Before posting today's patch notes a quick note. Since starting to post the patch notes I've been trying to come up with a comfortable way of posting them without causing a massive wall of text on the main page. Last week I tried putting previous patch notes first (before the massive list of the latest notes after the break), but that felt unsatisfactory. There won't always be emergency patches between main patches and it gave the impression of the main patch notes being missing on the blog's main page.

So this week instead I'll try something different: start with the main patch notes and put the break after one of the starting sections without further comment (leaving it just a "Read more" on the main page). Any additional patches will be posted after the main patch notes.

So with that out of the way, here are the 1.1.2 patch notes:

1.1.2 Patch Notes — 2/7/2012

Classes and Combat

Combat Ability Responsiveness

• Further improved response time for ability activation requests, especially in low-framerate situations.
• The activation bar now appears at the correct time (when the activation of an ability begins) and disappears when activation is complete.
• Instant combat abilities no longer occasionally start their combat animations twice, resulting in jerky behavior on the executing player's client.
• The display of the floating text from instant healing abilities is no longer delayed by the animation on the client and now properly reflects the time the effect happens on the server.
• Abilities on cooldown are now more easily distinguished from abilities that can be used.

Learn the Basics of The Old Republic

BioWare has started a new series of videos aimed to help out starting players. The first of these videos they named "Begin Your Journey" and talks about server selection and character creation. Here is the official news:

We are excited to announce that we have just published the first of what will be a series of tutorial videos designed to help new players learn the basics of em>Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. With each Quick Start Guide, new players will be guided through different aspects of the game.

The first video in this series, titled “Begin Your Journey,” takes you through the process of jumping into the game for the first time. In this video, Social Media Coordinator Eric Musco helps new players through the process of picking a server type, creating their first character and guiding players through their character class’s opening conversation.

You can watch this video right now by visiting the Quick Start Videos section of the New Player Guide. Over the next several weeks we’ll be releasing additional guides which will include topics such as navigation, user interface, and grouping with other players. We hope these videos will ease new players into the game while teaching more experienced players a thing or two that they might not have known.

Since this video is aimed at new players there obviously isn't anything of interest in it to those who are already quite familiar with TOR or with playing MMOs in general. But even besides that I can't help but feel a bit that if your game needs tutorial videos like this then there's a problem with the game to begin with. Shouldn't this explanation be in the game itself? The video itself is nice enough though.

Anyway, BioWare also announced two new weekly blogs. Read on after the break for the news, as well as a few more links and the developer quotes.

BioWare Announces Guild Summit

BioWare just announced The Old Republic Guild Summit:

Today, we are pleased to announce the first ever Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Guild Summit, being hosted in Austin, TX in March. Over the course of a few days, guild leaders from around the world will gather together to discuss the state of the game with the developers from BioWare Austin. Guild leaders (or a designated officer in the event of a guild leader being unable to attend) will participate in Q&A sessions with developers, roundtable feedback discussions, and will get a preview of some upcoming game features.

The goal of the summit is to facilitate an open discussion between guild leaders and the game design team. This event will provide an opportunity for attendees to voice their feedback directly to the teams responsible for the design of Star Wars: The Old Republic, hear the team’s thoughts and reasons behind design decisions, and discuss the current direction of the game.

The Guild Summit will be hosted from March 4th – 6th, 2012 at the DoubleTree Hotel Austin. Due to space limitations, the event will be invite-only. We've already invited guilds of various backgrounds and sizes to the Summit, from Endgame to Role-playing to PvP guilds, but we've got some space left for additional guild leaders who wish to attend. We ask that interested leaders submit an application, which can be found at this link.* Guild leaders will be evaluated based on the information provided in their application.

While we welcome applications from guild leaders from anywhere in the world, please be advised that the Summit will be conducted entirely in English. Applications will be accepted until 11:59PM CST (GMT -6) on February 10th. If you have any questions regarding the event, send us an email at guilds@swtor.com!

*Must be 21 or older to attend. Guild leaders selected to attend are responsible for all of their travel, food, and lodging expenses.

Sounds good to me. Though I can't help but wonder at their guild selection process. Considering how big TOR is and how many guilds it has they can't possibly invite all of them (obviously) and I'm sure that there are going to be a number of very disappointed guilds. I also fear that this might lead to some elitism as some guilds might consider themselves special for having been invited. But it all depends. In general it's just quite good to see BioWare reaching out to its community like this and trying to get feedback to help improve the game for all of us.

Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits

BioWare posted another developer blog titled "Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits". In it Rich Vogel talks about BioWare's process for fixing bugs and exploits. Here's an excerpt from the full blog post:

Let me start by explaining how we go about determining when to fix an issue in the live game, whether it is a bug or an exploit. Let’s begin with exploits – those cases when we determine that a bug in the code can give an unfair advantage to a player. (Remember, not all bugs are exploits!)

If an exploit is discovered that threatens players’ experience in the game or the in-game economy, we will usually try to create an Emergency Patch to fix that exploit. Before we declare something an emergency though, we have to validate the issue with our internal Quality Assurance, or QA team. They gather data working with our Customer Service, analytics, and development teams to determine the extent of the exploit and the steps needed to reproduce it. Once we have the steps, we work on a plan to fix the issue. Depending how long the issue will take to fix and how risky it is, we will decide if we need to temporarily disable the cause of the exploit in the game.

To those more familiar with the process of developing a game most of it probably won't come as a surprise. But even so it's good to be reminded that fixing bugs can be a complicated process. Just because you run into a bug that seems like a simple thing to fix doesn't mean that it'll get fixed immediately. And just because it might take a while to get fixed doesn't mean that they're ignoring the bug. Games are very complicated things, MMOs more so than most (particularly an MMO that's live as you want to avoid introducing new bugs even more than you otherwise would).

They are most definitely fixing bugs though, as anyone keeping an eye on the continuous stream of patch notes can attest.

After the break a number of links from across the web and the developer quotes.

1.1.1 Patch Notes

Here are the latest patch notes, both the 1.1.0c patch notes from last weekend (which I hadn't posted yet) and the 1.1.1 patch notes from yesterday.

1.1.0c Patch Notes - 1/28/2012

General

• Improved service to reduce the number of player disconnections to the character selection screen.

Read on after the break for the 1.1.1 patch notes.