Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

[jegs2]

Wife and I had to move to a non-dead server; gave us an opportunity to start new characters. Mine is a Chiss Republic trooper.

[Stormin]

I wonder, with EA's lineup of MMOs consisting entirely of dinosaurs (DAoC/UO) and relative failures like Failhammer/TOR if they are finally going to release an all access pass.

[Darth Quorthon]

I enjoyed SW:TOR for awhile, it was cool to finally find out where the story went and see what had became of Revan and the Exile. However, when I got an e-mail from Bioware billing saying my credit card had been declined, I didn't even bother sorting it out. I use the card for my Netflix subscription and when I called them to ask they said they hadn't declined any charges so my guess was a foul-up on Bioware's end. I decided that I had seen enough of the story, and with the endgame feeling like a tedious grind, I called it off.

[TheFeniX]

So, for those who haven't yet tried the game out Free Trials are coming soon. You can play up to level 15. I don't know how to take this. Trials are a good idea, as long as steps are taken against gold farmers, but I'd bet money the game is still hemorrhaging subscribers and the issue isn't the lack of people interested, it's that nothing was done to keep people interested as they progressed. Hopefully, the takers avoid Jedi as Tython is literally the shittiest "noob zone" in any game I care to remember and Coruscant doesn't fare much better.

Anyway, last I checked, the game was like 30+GBs so happy downloading.

Also, I was trolling around the forums the other night and stumbled upon something about the IA storyline. Supposedly Spoiler

there's some shadowy organization™ that has continually pitted the Jedi and Sith against each other for thousands of years because BUSINESS VENTURES! and that the Emperor is actually their puppet.

So, to those who have played an IA to 50. A. is this true? and B. WHAT THE FUCK!?

[Kuja]

Dafuq

This is the first I've heard of that, so I hope it's just something made-up. If that's actually something in the game, that...that just hurts my brain.

[Mr Bean]

Also, I was trolling around the forums the other night and stumbled upon something about the IA storyline. Supposedly Spoiler

there's some shadowy organization™ that has continually pitted the Jedi and Sith against each other for thousands of years because BUSINESS VENTURES! and that the Emperor is actually their puppet.

So, to those who have played an IA to 50. A. is this true? and B. WHAT THE FUCK!?

It's not in any way true, here's the real deal Spoiler

The end villains of the Agent storyline are a group that call themselves the Star Cabel, they are a collection of business interests, government lackeys and revolutionaries with a shared hatred of Force users. They rightly point out the last few thousand years of conflict has been caused by conflicts between the two branches of the Force user philosophy. That the big wars the galaxy spanning affairs that kill trillions have been instigated because the Sith inventively seek a power base to cast down the Jedi. So the Star Cabal's purpose, a collection of hundreds of diverse groups is to take advantage of this cycle to try and make the wars much more bloody for force users. To use the cover of conflict to destroy Jedi and Sith centers of learning. The Emperor is not their puppet nor are they his. They are in essence... well they are Force users who's three goals are to gather secrets and hidden knowledge, gather power for their members and use this power to try and shield normal people from war while trying to drag as many force users into combat as possible. They work both sides of the divide but are much more entrenched in the Sith side of things thanks to the fact they can be a lot more blunt over there. They take advantage of the Sith practice of offing your Master when you get more power than them to arrange hundreds of murders and failed murders. This current war is when they start moving into the open or almost so but it all goes to hell for them when a Ciper agent (You) manages to survive several assassination attempts and stumbles onto a major operation of theirs and to be honest they get way to cute with one of their methods and give you the information you need to track down a meeting of theirs which in turn gives you enough information to track down their main clubhouse and the black codex which is in essence the motherload of all information and a skeleton key to both Republic and Imperial systems, a combination AI slash uber database using backdoors and exploits the Star Cabal has spent the last thousand years building up.

The current goal before it all goes pear shapped is to slip information to both sides to the Jedi can assassination the Emperor, and the Sith will have a dozen worlds hand picked to retaliate against which just so happen to contain most of the retained Jedi knowledge.

[Havok]

Huh. That is actually kinda interesting.

[Mr Bean]

Huh. That is actually kinda interesting.

Agent Storyline is best storyline for a reason, and they are the LAST villains you face, you get two full sets of villains to fight before then all of them interesting.

Minor spoilers.. Spoiler

First you get to fight terrorists, and track them down meeting interesting people along the way and kill them.
Then big twist reveal!
Then it's off to play double agent and infiltrate the SIS which is the Republic version of Imperial intelligence except even more ruthless and much more independent
Bit wait big twist!
Oh no! Now the game has become reality except
Third big twist!
And at the you get to start making your choices for real, Chapter 2 totally changes your ending depending on who you do with what, who lives and who dies
And then fourth big twist hello Star Cabal.

[Kuja]

That's...somewhat less stupid than what I was envisioning, although it's still dumb that they
Spoiler

take "hey the Sith are dicks and want to kill the Jedi" and decide "let's kill both sides lol."

[Havok]

That's...somewhat less stupid than what I was envisioning, although it's still dumb that they
Spoiler

take "hey the Sith are dicks and want to kill the Jedi" and decide "let's kill both sides lol."

Spoiler

Well from a certain point of view the Jedi are just as guilty for the countless deaths their wars and battles with the Sith have caused as the Sith. Dicks or not.

[Kuja]

Spoiler

Well from a certain point of view the Jedi are just as guilty for the countless deaths their wars and battles with the Sith have caused as the Sith. Dicks or not.

Spoiler

I get the reasoning, it just strikes me as rather dumb that someone would look at something like the Jedi/Sith conflict where one side are pretty much all decent guys and the others are a bag of dicks and decide "hey, let's take down both at once!" instead of focusing on the guys who consistently act like poo-flinging monkeys.

I mean, have the Jedi ever actually started a war? I may be wrong but I'm fairly sure the major conflicts have always been started by the Sith.

[Civil War Man]

Spoiler

I get the reasoning, it just strikes me as rather dumb that someone would look at something like the Jedi/Sith conflict where one side are pretty much all decent guys and the others are a bag of dicks and decide "hey, let's take down both at once!" instead of focusing on the guys who consistently act like poo-flinging monkeys.

I mean, have the Jedi ever actually started a war? I may be wrong but I'm fairly sure the major conflicts have always been started by the Sith.

Spoiler

There is one organization that has produced more powerful Sith Lords than any other organization in the galaxy. That organization is the Jedi Order.

[TheFeniX]

It's not in any way true, here's the real deal

Ok, so not balls retarded... just kind of dumb.

Spoiler

There is one organization that has produced more powerful Sith Lords than any other organization in the galaxy. That organization is the Jedi Order.

Spoiler

Jedi are still extremely effective peace-keepers. Qui-Gon fully expected to be able to solve the trade dispute in no time flat and would have (due to the Neimodians(sp) freaking out immediately) if Sideous hadn't been involved. They could more easily devote resources into destroying rogue Jedi rather than help wipe out rigid yet effective peace officers. And it doesn't hurt organized crime too much because Jedi seem uninterested in handling anything of that sort as they allow shitty systems such as slavery on Tatooine. They didn't even seem interested in cleaning up the corruption in the senate until they found out a Sith Lord was involved.

Anyway, I asked this a while back and was wondering if anyone had a chance to or could test it next time they are on.

1. Turn on autorun.
2. Hit "b" (or whatever opens/closes your inventory) at a fairly rapid rate.
3. Post results.

[Losonti Tokash]

...why?

[TheFeniX]

...why?

I posted this a while back:

Get this shit: A buddy was on Ilum and complaining about the graphics lag. As a joke I told him to "Spam B if you want your computer to die." All that does is open and close your inventory over and over for those that don't know. Oh, and do not do this in a performance (haha, not really) heavy area like Ilum. His client crashed and took most of his computer down with it. He couldn't open anything, even Task Manager. He had to hard power his computer down and reboot. I couldn't decide whether to feel like shit or laugh myself to death.

Basically, when I played, the mere act of opening your inventory would wreck your FPS. Now, this in of itself isn't a huge issue, more an annoyance. But it seems to be tied to the same asset issue that plagues objectives updating (which also causes .5 second or so graphical delays), as well as a few others. Opening the inventory and seeing what happens seems to be the easiest way to see if BW has fixed this hilarious oversight.

I talked about this a bit more in other posts, but some programmers on the official forums seem to think it's tied to the way the SWTOR engine routinely dumps and recopies information into/out of VRAM, RAM, and the HDD. Contrast to WoW when, the first time you open your inventory it lags a bit, but after that, you can spam B with no ill-effects. You can also load into an area, exit, then load back in extremely quickly, unlike SWTOR were swapping zones seems to just dump all that information out of RAM.

[Kuja]

Ouch.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/ ... r-departs/

Star Wars: The Old Republic has quietly faded into the background lately in terms of generating news. Last we heard a few months back, the game was shedding subscribers by the hundreds of thousands and considering a free-to-play option. Since then, all has been quiet.

But quiet isn’t good for a game that was supposed to be huge. The Old Republic was meant to unseat World of Warcraft for the MMO throne, or at the very least, compete with it. But neither of those things have really happened, and what’s reportedly the most expensive game in history is something of a dud.

That’s bad news for EA, and worse for Bioware, who as of today, has reportedly begun laying off staff in their Austin studio, and this isn’t the first time SWTOR staff has been cut. But preceding that move, according to Gamasutra, executive producer Rich Vogel is no longer with the company. Vogel was a key part of the development of SWTOR, but his departure means either he wasn’t happy with the project, or EA wasn’t happy with him. I’d guess the latter.

There’s no word on who will be brought in to replace him, but this isn’t the kind of news SWTOR needs. Recently the game has gone free-to-play for early levels, but it has to be considering the jump to free-to-play in its entirety. We haven’t heard numbers out of their camp in a while now, and that means they’re probably nothing to brag about.

The community has likely condensed into a ball of avid players who are satisfied with the game (and a bunch who are still complaining), and it’s shed those who just couldn’t be bothered with it (myself included). I’ll admit, quitting the game had something to do with the fact that it definitely didn’t seem worth the $15 a month payment, but truth is, if it was free, it’s hard to envision returning as the game just wasn’t all that great in my estimation. It’s perfectly alright, but for a game that took a few hundred million to develop and is meant to be played for years to come, it needed to be better than just “alright.”

I predict the next time we’ll be writing about SWTOR it will be the announcement of the fully free-to-play switchover. Until then, some updated player figures from EA would be nice.

[Mr Bean]

I recently returned, I have nearly completed the entire Imperial side of the story, just have a Warrior/Jug at level 42 fresh for Belsavis which means he has three planets left to go and done. I've got all my Republic characters on Courscant or just a bit beyond and once I finish off their stories I can't see myself going back for any reason as the end game is just not worth it. If they go ftp I might go back after a two year break to check out the content but very much the game is twelve serves strong and they are full serves but the end game pvp is non-existant outside warzones and space combat is not due to be even touched for another year and a half. The expansion, the possibly thirty dollar expansion contains exactly one world and one race which will let them raise the level cap but beyond that... nothing and it supposedly due out this year.

[PREDATOR490]

An extra world, race and level raise wont solve shit and if that is the rate of the expansions. The game is going to fade into obscurity.
Nevermind this is probably content that was already made and setup for an expansion. The game needs more longevity provided by repeateable content and / or player fueled content. So far Bioware have borrowed from the classic MMO trend of simply making repetative gear grinds and pittiful PVP.

Just have to wait until Bioware figure out the STO equivelent of player made content as yearly paid expansions are not going to sustain this game alone. Rabid fanbase or not.

[TheFeniX]

Hey, at least we're getting a NEW REVEAL of HK-51 because fuck originality let's just retread old shit under the guise of new development. Wait, did you see the new "invite a friend" speeder? Think Anakin's podracer except if he designed it while suffering from a cratered head wound. I mean, it's totally cool that the energy beams capable of paralyzing limbs are within inches of your arms because... STAR WARS!!!! I want to beat the design team into a coma with a copy of "3D modelling for dummies."

Those 6 month subs are coming up for renewal (it's going to be staggered over the whole month according to some of the posters on the forums) and EA's next financial report is due.... the 26th? This should be good. I bet good money they're under the 500k break-even subscriber number.

[PREDATOR490]

I cancelled my sub and the only time I logged in over the past two months has been to do the character transfer to the new server - Soon as a I transfer I arrived to a station with 7 people on it. I was not impressed and I had to change my legacy... oh and still nothing new to do except the same old shit.
I could level up one of every character for the story... but leveling on empty worlds is just completely bullshit and you miss heroics.

If you attempt to complain... rabid bioboys will strike you down by saying heroics are optional content, just like flashpoints. Thats good and all... but I have multiple characters and have still not done some flashpoints or heroics since the game launched. Might as well change Optional' to 'Worthless'

The refer-a-friend reward... I will give credit to Bioware for not pulling the same stunt Cryptic did. People ask for more bridge officers and ships from the franchise.
Refer 1 friend and get a uniform
Refer 2 friends and get an exclusive holographic bridge officer
Refer 5 friends and get the Galaxy-X

Though the look of that speeder is just hilariously stupid so I dont feel encourage to refer anyone...
The HK-51 - I thought that was already in the game files but had been disabled.

Personnally, I would have preferred the ability to unlock the companions of other characters via the legacy system with a remote management feature. Thus those people with 8 characters could have 8 characters worth of companions doing crafting or be sending other characters on missions.
The legacy system is pretty much the only unique aspect of TOR left but Bioware are content to fill it with absolute garbage like rocket boots that cost insane amounts of money per character.

[TC Pilot]

1. Turn on autorun.
2. Hit "b" (or whatever opens/closes your inventory) at a fairly rapid rate.
3. Post results.

No result, or at least no discernable framerate drop.

[TheFeniX]

If you attempt to complain... rabid bioboys will strike you down by saying heroics are optional content, just like flashpoints. Thats good and all... but I have multiple characters and have still not done some flashpoints or heroics since the game launched. Might as well change Optional' to 'Worthless'

I remember seeing one excerpt from a post complaining about how PvP is a buggy unbalanced mess that was something like "Easy solution: don't be competitive."

Refer 5 friends and get the Galaxy-X

Oh man, you brought that up. Back when all that shit was going on, I usually just contented myself with trolling around the Kerrat system. I heard in Zone chat 2-3 different regulars talking about how they had no friends (haha!) and just bought 5 extra copies to get the Galaxy X. I knew it was dumb at the time, but you should have been there when they offered the ship on the C-Store like 2 weeks later. Was fucking hilarious.

The HK-51 - I thought that was already in the game files but had been disabled.

I know! It's even better because they aren't even just trying to pass off KOTOR2 content as new and exciting: they're trying to pass off shit that's already in their own game. Who knows, maybe they'll hardcode Vibroswords out of the game, then reintroduce them a month from now with a super-awesome reveal trailer.

The legacy system is pretty much the only unique aspect of TOR left but Bioware are content to fill it with absolute garbage like rocket boots that cost insane amounts of money per character.

Well, of course. You expect them to do something novel and groundbreaking? Like I said in an earlier post, they wouldn't have so many issues if they just increased the companion limit and made a 1+3 pets setup viable for dungeons and heroics. It's an easy fix while they work out issues like server imbalance. Instead of making content enjoyable, they're just upping the grind. They did the same thing to Ilum before they just scrapped it completely.

No result, or at least no discernable framerate drop.

Wow, they fixed it. Good on them. At least something is going right.

[TheFeniX]

SWTOR is going F2P this fall. It's even better because of all the shitty rewards they're offering, there isn't a single piece of original content. God damn this whole thing has been one big fucking joke. They kept rehashing tired bullshit throughout the games run and now they're just keeping with it.

There's a FAQ up for those interested.

With the Free-to-Play option, no subscription will be required! You will be able to download and play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ all the way up to level 50 for free, with gameplay restrictions that limit access to advanced features and group content. However, we will be offering the option to purchase services, items, and content to customize the gameplay experience. These purchases will be made available via the new Cartel Market and will allow you to choose the way that you want to enjoy the game.

So..... 7 months after release and we're going F2P in another 3-4.

The really annoying part for me is that this is probably just going to kill the SW license for the next few years and it's already been run through the ringer.

[Chirios]

They should've just made it single player. It would've been a sick single player game if they'd kept the options to play for either side and not written Revan and the Exile as morons.

[bilateralrope]

It's not going completely free to play. There are several things that f2p players will have limited or no access to.

So it's more like an extended trial than actually going free to play. Expect another round of rage against SWTOR when people used to F2P games giving full access to non-cosmetic content realize this.