SWTOR's E3 2012

Last week was E3 again, and SWTOR was there as well. During EA's press conference on Monday Dr. Ray Muzyka stepped on stage to talk about The Old Republic:

BioWare also posted the video Dr. Muzyka shows at the end there on the official website:

Preview Exciting New Reveals from E3!

Throughout E3, journalists will be able to take a sneak peek at some of the exciting content that is coming to Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ in the next year. This includes new Space Content, an increased level cap, the upcoming Operation: Terror From Beyond, which takes players to the Gree-controlled world of Asation to battle against an army of unseen horrors, and more!

But our biggest reveal is the announcement of Makeb, a brand new planet never-before seen in the Star Wars™ universe! A fully-realized world for you and your friends to explore, Makeb will also introduce an all-new storyline. The Hutt Cartel, tired of being ignored by the great powers of the galaxy, has taken Makeb in an attempt to acquire an unmatched power which can bring both the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire to their knees. It will be up to you and your allies to face off against the Hutt Cartel, breaking their hold on this once tranquil world and end their bid for galactic domination.

Preview Makeb and see a small sampling of the other content coming up, in this new gameplay preview!

One thing you might notice when watching the two videos is that the second one, the one on the official site, doesn't include the "New Playable Species: Cathar" bit. I'm not sure why they left that out, but it's not there and it definitely is in the first one.

For the rest it's a new Flashpoint, a new Warzone, a new space mission, etc. The biggest surprise in the whole thing was that they're planning to raise the level cap before the year is out, extending the class stories onto a new planet from what I understand. Dr. Muzyka also announced that The Old Republic will be free-to-play for the first fifteen levels come July (which is pretty much the same as all the free weekends and friend trials that they've had, just without limit).

To be honest I found the whole thing, SWTOR's entire E3 presence, to be decidedly disappointing. Perhaps that is because I was hoping for a big announcement, like the development of an expansion or such and nothing of what they announced really fit the bill. In fact everything was altogether very expected. I would even say that it sounded somewhat minimal in the way that they represented it as "one of everything".

True, the raised level cap was a surprise... but I'm not actually sure that's a good thing. One of the biggest challenges for TOR right now is giving people enough to do. By raising the level cap, even if it's just by five levels (as I suspect), you're basically invalidating all of the current endgame content (just remember how trivial level 45 content is for your level 50 character). To keep all of that relevant they have to do a lot of extra work. Work which, I think, would be better spent on either making more current endgame content, or by making more of the existing content viable for a maxed out character (like downscaling characters going back to lower zones and such; lesson learned from GW2). Sure I want to continue my class stories and adding more for that is good, but I think that they can do this without raising the level cap.

Anyway, after the break more details about changes coming in Game Update 1.3, details on character transfers, the Community Q&A from last Friday, a bunch of links from E3, and the developer quotes.

Community Q&A: June 1st, 2012

E3 is about to kick off today with the big press conferences by Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Sony. I've got no idea if The Old Republic is going to have any announcements (though it wouldn't surprise me if they started talk of an expansion). We know that they'll be at E3, but it might just be giving people some hands-on time with update 1.3 or such. Either way, I thought it best to put up the update before the craziness kicks off.

Last Friday BioWare had another Community Q&A focused around Game Update 1.3. Here's an excerpt:

Dzeiger: With the changes to make social gear "adaptive" and augmentable and thus more desirable, are there any plans to revise the social points system? For example, making it per-Legacy rather than per-character, and/or expanding options for social point gathering at endgame that doesn't involve endless Esseles and Black Talon runs.

Daniel: Yes, the social point system will be getting a major revamp in the future and many of our systems will be going Legacy-wide, though whether social is one of them is still under discussion. In the meantime, Game Update 1.3 will bring social points to all Flashpoint and Operation boss kills, meaning far more social points just for being social and playing with friends.

I've personally pretty much given up on getting any social points; I guess that I'm just not social. But even so this seems like I good change and I seriously hope that they make social points a Legacy-wide system.

After the break a Community Team update, a few updates from various sites and a handful of developer quotes.

Community Q&A: May 25th, 2012

Last Friday BioWare posted another Community Q&A, this time about Game Update 1.3. Here's an excerpt:

Mallorik: What is your philosophy on cross server LFG tools? Are we getting a same server tool just to hold us over while you work on cross server tech or is this just a test to see if a same server tool will do the job? 

Daniel: Although we’re certainly willing to entertain the idea of cross-server LFG tools if the need arises, it’s a last resort for us. We firmly believe for cooperative play it is important to have a community and social responsibility that you simply can’t have with players appearing and disappearing from your reality. Instead we are pushing hard on servers that are massive compared to the ones we launched with. Early tests show we’ll be able to raise the peak concurrent user cap above what it was at launch. Combining that with server transfers to enable players to move to these new servers and fill them to the brim, we should see some fantastic, vibrant communities develop where Group Finder will always be able to find someone for your content.  

There has been some speculation on what exactly they mean with these super servers, but I think that regardless it's absolutely vital for the health of the game to ensure that the general server populations seem healthy again. Though I also fear that any talk of server merges will likely just add fuel to the fire of the perception that the game is 'dying', so they have to be careful. I'm betting the impression that they're going with the spin that they've increased the capacity of the servers and that is why they're merging. Though I think that the only way to really pull that off if by doing away with 'servers' altogether and just go for a single one (per territory). We'll see.

The post also promised more detailed blog articles in the near future about Game Update 1.3, so looking forward to read those.

After the break a new TOR novel and another interview. No developer quotes this time (since it has only been a few days since the previous post there haven't been much of any new developer posts to quote).

Coming in Game Update 1.3

I've been out of the country the last number of days, so this update is a bit later than usual. The main thing to report is that BioWare released another "Coming Soon to Star Wars: The Old Republic" video, this one for the upcoming Game Update 1.3. Here is the official news:

See what the future holds for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, as Game Director James Ohlen highlights some of the new game systems coming in Game Update 1.3, as well as some of the playable content that will be released in the coming months. In this ‘Coming Up’ video, you will learn about the new Group Finder and Character Transfer systems, as well as new Legacy Perks and other features that are coming in the next Game Update, Allies.

The group finder sounds good. Character transfer is good as well, though I wonder about the details of how it works (for example: do we have to pay real money for a character transfer). The Legacy Perks they've pretty much talked about since they started talking about the Legacy System; maybe they'll convince me to start paying any attention at all to the Legacy system. And I also quite like the adaptive gear even if pretty much all of the social gear is way out of my league since I've got hardly any social points. Either way, it sounds like it'll be a decent update.

After the break some interviews, some bad news for BioWare and the developer quotes.

Community Q&A: May 11th, 2012

Last Friday BioWare posted another Community Q&A. Here's an excerpt:

Freeborne: Alacrity as a stat seems to be encouraged in "Energy Based' classes (Troopers/Smugglers) through our talent trees. However, Alacrity seems to be a terrible secondary stat for us. The faster we use abilities, the faster we lose our energy - and the less energy we have, the less energy we regenerate. Are there any plans to review Alacrity, or at least its place in some class talent trees?

Austin: I agree. We're exploring ways of improving Alacrity that we hope to get working for a future Game Update. As much as I'd like to, I can't provide details on this plan yet. It's possible that we'll address passive Alacrity boosts in the skill trees, but those changes need to be solid and work for the long haul; it would be unacceptable to have a ‘temporary’ skill in place that we planned on removing at a later date.

I'm not a min-maxer by any stretch of the imagination, but I've never been quite certain of the use of Alacrity. Then when I read a blog post somewhere making an argument that anything that lets you use your skills faster is basically a poor choice as it also burns through your energy faster that made a lot of sense to me. As such I've kind of been ignoring Alacrity in my characters even if it sounds like a cool thing, making you faster. So it's welcome to hear that they're looking at approaching that differently.

After the break the developer quotes and a quick reply by EA on investors losing a bit of faith in The Old Republic.

Community Q&A: May 4th, 2012

Here in the UK we just had a bank holiday weekend, which for me meant spending the day running around Quesh and Hoth with my Consular (instead of working on my brother's website like I was probably supposed to). But now that that has passed it's time for rounding up the updates for TOR.

There's a the (temporary) return of Fan Friday and there's BioWare taking action against fraudulent payments. There's also news on subscription numbers coming from EA's earnings call and the developer quotes. But all that is after the break, first let's take a look at the Community Q&A BioWare posted last Friday; here's an excerpt:

Lorroc: Are there any plans to introduce a mentoring system in SWTOR? In some other MMOs, this mentoring system lowers the stats and armor of high level characters and grays out abilities that they didn't have during lower levels so that they can help their lower level friends.

Damion: I'm a big fan of ‘down leveling,’ and I've been pushing to add something like this for a long, LONG time.  Plus, you just can't ignore the master/apprentice relationship as being a core part of the Star Wars experience.  So yeah, this is coming -- someday.  And, as always, it will have a couple of unique twists that I think people will enjoy. 

Ooh, I'm definitely a fan of 'down leveling' as well; anything to make it easier for people to play together despite level difference. And I'm curious what twists they'll add. I hope it includes participating in your low-level friend's quests instead of just tagging along as they do their quests). We'll see.

Read on after the break for all the other stuff I mentioned above.

Community Q&A: April 20th 2012

The Rakghoul plague is pretty much over. I thought that it was a great event, a lot of fun (even if I ended up not having that much time for it... at least I got myself one of the red mini ghouls). Now it's back to business as usual in The Old Republic, and that includes another Community Q&A posted by BioWare last Friday. Here's an excerpt from the full Community Q&A:

Irouven: What is the idea behind the selection at the equipment vendor for planetary commendations? Sometimes you get boots, sometimes chest-armor, never a potential "full" outfit.

Damion: We don't want you to get all of the pieces of an armor set from any one source of gear.  We want you to do multiple activities in the game to build out a full set of gear.  This is a conscious decision on our part to encourage and reward playing multiple facets of the game.  So you should do other things -- heroics, check the GTN, etc -- the full set of gear is out there.

I'm not entirely sure I like that. I think I'd prefer to get a full, different, set per gameplay activity. But I can understand why they did it like this. In the end I don't really care that much about gear, as look as my character looks nice.

After the break some more news, a few articles from across the web, and the developer quotes.

Rakghoul Outbreak on Tatooine!

It seems that BioWare started a live event. This first one takes place on Tatooine and involves an outpreak of the rakghoul plague. It seems new objects have appeared on the two (Republic and Imperial) Fleets as well as on Tatooine; interacting with these gives you a brief ingame cutscene like this one (thanks to Darth Hater):

See the other three videos further down (after the break). There are more, user-gathered, details on the event on the official forums. Apparently participating in the event nets players rakghoul DNA which they can trade in for goodies.

From a roleplaying perspective I'm somewhat in a quandary... both of my characters (Sniper and Sage) would probably listen to the news broadcast and stay away from Tatooine. But that would mean that I'd miss out on the event. So I might just go "out of character" and have a look (tonight) anyway.

Next to the other three videos after the break there's also a few links and a few developer quotes.

Warzone: Novare Coast

Last week BioWare posted a video for the new Warzone: Novare Coast. Here is the official news:

We are excited to reveal Novare Coast, our latest Player-vs-Player Warzone featured in the upcoming Game Update 1.2 “Legacy” for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™!

On the war-torn planet of Denova, opposing forces vie for control of Novare Coast, a strategically vital beachhead that leads to the open oceans of Denova. Whoever controls this coastline will have a decisive advantage in taking control of the planet. To secure the beach, sides battle for control of three mortar turrets which can be used to pound the enemy with artillery fire.

See the Warzone for yourself by checking out the latest video.

Since I'm not one for PvP there's really not much for me to say about the video.

After the break the Community Q&A, a number of links and the developer quotes.

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.

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.

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.

Community Q&A: Feb 24th 2012

Last Friday BioWare posted another Community Q&A, answering eleven questions. Here's one such question and answer:

Zennis: Has there been any discussion to streamlining the Space Port process? Perhaps allowing speeders in the Space Ports besides the Fleet?

Brian Audette (Senior Designer): We've absolutely heard what the fans are saying and have been exploring options to address these issues. While we are still investigating allowing speeder use in Space Ports, we've also been looking for other ways to get people from point A to point B with greater haste. One such feature will specifically affect planets that have Orbital Stations instead of Space Ports such as: Tython, Korriban, Hoth, and Belsavis. We'll be adding an option for players to go directly to their ships from the surface shuttles as opposed to having them run through the Orbital Station to their airlocks. This feature and some additional tweaks will start showing up in Game Update 1.2.

I'm noticing a bit of a recurring theme in these... "will be available in Game Update 1.2". At least over a third of the question pretty much boil down to that answer. And last week was similar. Sounds like 1.2 will truly be a massive update.

See all the questions and answers on the official homepage.

After the break a couple of links and the developer quotes.

Community Q&A: Feb 17th 2012

Last Friday BioWare posted another Community Q&A. Here's one of the twelve questions that they answered:

HollowPoint: There has been a large push in the community for chat bubbles, especially with a toggle option for those who don't want them. Is a chat bubble system in the works? If so, when can we expect it to be implemented?

Damion Schubert: They're definitely on the list. We’ve got many active roleplayers in the dev team and chat bubbles have always been important to us. We actually had chat bubbles in beta, but there was unfortunately some serious performance issues that our implementation caused that, for example, made things really suck in warzones and the fleet. They’ll be coming soon, but in priority, the GUI team is focused first on GUI customization. I'll have a better idea of timing once we get past that. And yes, for people who hate them, whenever we do them, they'll be toggleable.

Though I understand that they've got a lot on their plate and UI customization is going to be enjoyed by more people, it's still somewhat disappointing that chat bubbles are taking so long for them to implement. Then again I've never really used them in other games either unless they were implemented really, really well.

For this one and the other eleven questions see the original post.

BioWare also, somewhat quietly (at least I nearly missed them), released a number of new videos last Friday. Those, the developer quotes, and a few other things after the break.

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.

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.

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.

Teaching Elephants To Do Ballet

That was too good a title to pass up. The Old Republic is a very, very big game and creating it was a very, very big project with lots of moving part. And apparently what Greg Zeschuk said about that was that: “Coordinating it all is like teaching elephants to do ballet.” There's a bit on that, some stock yo-yo-ing that happened last week, some reviews and interviews, and some barking dogs. But all that after the break, first there's a note on the Community Blog by Jeff Hickman on the Ilum situation:

After Game Update 1.1 went live, we discovered that the Open World PvP area on Ilum was not working as our PvP design team intended. As many of you know, large groups of players began capturing the Ilum control points, then 'camping' at the enemy's base. This led to a very frustrating experience for a number of players who were unable to leave their base and fight back against their attackers. It was not a fair gameplay experience. In addition, some players on the attacking side gained more Valor points than designed for the time they spent in PvP.

The amount of Valor granted from these activities was significantly more than intended and we are now carefully investigating players who were on Ilum during this period, and present at some of these 'camping' events. I can reassure you that those who were involved and who gained an unfair advantage over other players inappropriately will be carefully reviewed and action will be taken to restore game balance. This could include Valor adjustments or account actions in accordance with the severity of the issue.

We have made the decision not to enact a mass 'rollback' of Valor points for all players in the game, or even on Ilum. This would unfairly penalize some players who may not have been present during this event. Rest assured though, anyone and everyone who is found to have exploited the situation to an unreasonable degree will be investigated and actions taken as needed. Our in-game metrics are able to give us precise details on where players were, what they were doing and what rewards they gained.

We take any sort of situation where one group of players gains an unexpected or unintended advantage over other players very seriously and will act to ensure that all players can have a fair and fun game experience.

Thanks for your patience while we worked to resolve this issue. Our team worked diligently to get a patch ready to address this and other issues, and we're already seeing the results in improved battles on Ilum. As always we welcome your feedback and will continue to improve moving forward!

Jeff Hickman,
Executive Producer – Live Services

I'm not sure if this will appease those who ran into the troubles on Ilum. And from what I understand (I don't really PvP and haven't been to Ilum yet) things still aren't quite right there. One of the biggest problems seems to be the faction imbalance where there's apparently (and not altogether surprisingly) a lot more Empire players than Republic ones. So BioWare has a lot of work ahead of them to make Ilum the PvP experience that it should be. Still, at least it sounds like they're trying.

After the list a second Community Blog post, this one by Georg Zoeller about the ability delay some people have been suffering from. Also the aforementioned laundry list of other posts.

Rise of the Rakghouls Coming

Tuesday the 17^th The Old Republic is going to get its first content update and it's called Rise of the Rakghouls. And here I am, currently playing on Taris already neck-deep in rakghouls and all I can think is "they're going to rise even further? Do they want me to drown in the damn things?". But no, it's referring to the a new story-driven Flashpoint we'll be seeing. Here's the trailer for it from YouTube:

Could be interesting, though it's hard to tell from that trailer. It's not going to be the only addition though. No, as Shacknews reports there are in fact two big content additions:

Flashpoint: Kaon Under Siege is a completely new and unique group combat experience located on Kaon, a planet in the Tion Hegemony, a strategically important sector of the galaxy that has remained neutral, Groups of up to four Republic or Imperial players must race to Kaon to eliminate the Rakghouls outbreak, securing the allegiance of the Tion Hegemony for their respective sides. This Flashpoint will be available for level 50 characters only and will feature Normal and Heroic modes.

Operation: Karagga’s Palace is a continuation of the game’s second launch Operation. In the Operation, teams of 8 or 16 players will face off against Karagga and the Hutt Cartel after the Hutts abandon their famous neutrality and breach agreements with both the Republic and Empire. Concerned by the threat of another combatant in the war for galactic control, both factions send teams of their most powerful heroes to confront Karagga and determine his intentions. This Operation will feature Normal, Heroic and Nightmare difficulty modes.

Those are the big additions, but there are more changes coming in the patch. MMORPG reports on DR. Greg Zeschuk's words:

“A month ago when we launched the Early Game Access program for Star Wars: The Old Republic, we promised our fans that this would just be the beginning of our journey together,” said Dr. Greg Zeschuk, General Manager of the BioWare Label’s MMO Business Unit and Co-Founder of BioWare. “Rise of the Rakghouls adds a lot of the things our community has been asking for – additional higher level group content, features like anti-aliasing, PvP bracketing and more. In the future, game updates will be even more substantial, as we promise to continue to not only add to The Old Republic, but to also improve and refine the experience with the full Legacy System and new Guild features.”

That full Legacy System and new Guild features (such as the guild bank) refer to the second content update that's currently slated for March. Read on after the break for various interviews with the developers (particularly James Ohlen) about Rise of the Rakghouls, the second update and beyond.

Unofficial Holiday Updates

"Unofficial" is perhaps not the right word, more "Coming From Sources Other Than The Official Website". But that makes for a bit long title so I went with what I did, making it the next in my series of "playing catch-up with the Holidays" series.

Though I'll start with something that can be considered an official update as it was posted on The Old Republic's official YouTube channel. The following video shows a flash freeze mob in New York's Times Square held to celebrate the launch of the game:

That was quite amazing. Would've been something to just be there, going about your last-minute Christmas shopping, and then have all that happening. Though when I started watching I didn't know that it was a freeze mob and kind of expected to see some choreographed combat. This was still amazing though.

After the break I'll look at a bunch of other things posted over the Holiday weeks.