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Hyperspace Beacon: Seven things I learned while writing about SWTOR
This travel through hyperspace cannot be compared to anything else. Not many people get an opportunity to work on something they love professionally, like my writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic. With Massively as we know it coming to an end, it's time to say goodbye to this passenger. Before I actually say my final farewell to Massively, I'd like to leave you, fans of Massively and the Hyperspace Beacon, with a list of things that I've learned from writing this column.
Crowfall's Gordon Walton on how Trammel impacted classic Ultima Online
With Ultima Online's second expansion in 2000 (yes, 2000) came a copy of the world, a facet called Trammel where non-consensual PvP was forbidden. Ever since, the current and former UO community has debated whether this was a brilliant or terrible move. Now we have the word from former Executive Producer Gordon Walton, who discussed Trammel on the Crowfall forums. "I regret some (but not all) of the outcome," Walton began, going on to explain that the rampant PvP was driving away over 70% of new players to UO. The creation of Trammel doubled the playerbase, but he said that it disenfranchised the hardcore PvPers who now had to prey on each other instead of PvEers. "I also learned from my UO experience that it's really hard to change a brand," he wrote. "Inherent in the UO brand was the fact it was a gritty, hard core world of danger. We were not successful in bringing back the (literally) hundreds of thousands of players who had quit due to the unbridled PvP in the world (~5% of former customers came back to try the new UO, but very few of them stayed). We discovered that people didn't just quit UO, they divorced it in a very emotional way. But we did keep more of the new players that came in by a large margin, significantly more than than the PvP players we lost."
SWTOR dishes out punishment for a major exploit
Last last week, BioWare community manager Eric Musco wrote a detailed post regarding a recent exploit that's plagued the PvE endgame for Star Wars: The Old Republic, explaining the planned punishments and the team's reasoning behind them. "We didn't take these actions lightly," Musco posts, "and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating." Penalties applied to the affected accounts ranged from a warning and one day ban to even full and permanent suspensions. Musco finished up the post by encouraging players to continue to report potential exploits as soon as they are found.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining SWTOR's producer letter
At the community cantina that Star Wars: The Old Republic held this past weekend at PAX South, community manager Eric Musco said that the community team was going to do something different in 2015 during the cantinas. He said that he wanted to reveal some tidbit at each and every event. And this cantina yielded us an early look at Producer Bruce Maclean's roadmap letter to the community. In the letter, he talks about where the SWTOR story will take us, what's on the horizon for flashpoints, personal stories, planets, and the outfit designer. But what is all this new stuff, and should it get people excited about the coming year? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for that. If you play for similar reasons as I do, then there is plenty to be excited about. However, there are certain players, like PvPers, who might be a little frustrated by what they are seeing and not seeing in the letter.
PAX South 2015: SWTOR reveals its plans for this year
When Eric Musco, the Star Wars: The Old Republic community manager, took the stage at the Community cantina last night at PAX South, he revealed that in 2015 the team wants to do something a bit different with this and future cantina crawl events. In the past, it has been policy not to reveal anything at the cantinas; they were intended to be social events where players could get some face-time with the developers of the game that they both enjoyed. However, going forward, the community and development teams have decided that each cantina will reveal that had not been mentioned before. The reveal at this weekend's cantina came in the form of the yet-to-be-published producer's letter by Bruce Maclean. The completely made-up story is that it was stolen from his computer while he wasn't looking and printed out to share with us at the cantina. After the break, you'll find a copy of that letter as it was dictated to cantina goers. The caveat, of course, is that this is not the final version of the letter that will appear on the official site in two weeks, so everything is subject to change.
SWTOR Q&A mentions 12x, soloable flashpoints
Werit has posted a Q&A with Star Wars: The Old Republic's community team. It touches on the well-received 12x experience boost, which BioWare says it will be discussing "later this year." There's also a bit about making older flashpoints soloable and while BioWare says it doesn't want to make all group content accessible to single players, it does have "some major story moments that [it] would like every player to see."
EA Access offers first look at Battlefield Hardline
General PSA for EA Access subscribers, and likely to be similar to the Dragon Age: Inquisition promotion, Battlefield: Hardline will also be available early through the service. "Yes, you will be able to get early access to Battlefield Hardline through EA Access," responded the official Battlefield twitter to a question about the game being downloadable for the service. The DA:I early access was on the Xbox One-exclusive service for five days ahead of launch, with a trial period of six hours. We've followed up with EA for further details.
Lawsuit alleges EA infringed on sports stadium update patent
White Knuckle IP filed a lawsuit late last week against EA, alleging that the publisher infringed on a patent that focuses on methods for updating sports games based on real-life changes. The suit referred to U.S. Pat. No. 8,529,350, which described methods that record real-world parameters, then store those elements on a server so players can download them to update their games. The patent dates back to October 2002. While the patent is related to another one that deals with updating an athlete's statistics and skills based on real-life performance, the lawsuit focuses on changes to the appearance and attributes of stadiums and venues. The lawsuit specifically targets games in EA Sports' NCAA Football and Tiger Woods PGA Tour series, from NCAA Football 10 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 through the last respective entries, NCAA Football 14 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14. According to Patent Arcade, White Knuckle "did not identify any specific feature in its complaint." [Image: EA Sports]
Dragon Age: Inquisition stats record more than 2 million flying lizards slain
The official Dragon Age: Inquisition Twitter account has some interesting statistics for all the Heralds of Andraste out there. According to tweets made earlier this week, more than 2.6 million dragons have been slain by players of Inquisition. The unfortunate Ferelden Frostback was the most-killed of her species, while the Highland Ravager has been the most successful at evading death. Fifty-eight percent of all dragons were killed in the land of Orlais, so any of our readers who happen to be fire-breathing monsters, take note: this is not a land you want to be traveling to right now. As for who's doing the slaying, the overall majority - 68 percent - of Inquisitors have been male, while 32 percent have been female. While the percentage of female heroes may seem small, it's actually a big step up from BioWare's Mass Effect series; back in 2011, the developer revealed that fewer than 15 percent of players used a female version of Commander Shepard between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. But really, it doesn't matter if you're male, female, Qunari, Dwarf, etc. What matters is that we find the dragon that sounds like Sean Connery and -- oh, wrong thing? Wrong thing. [Image: EA]
Star Wars: The Old Republic will address balance and ranked PvP for update 3.1
Star Wars: The Old Republic is launching update 3.1 in about a month, and the developers are using this patch to address some standing issues. The patch also kicks off the game's fourth ranked play season, which is scheduled to last about three months. This season will be used as the basis for some new ranked play adjustments, such as implementing a "floor" rating for picking up the lowest-tier season rewards in Season 5. The season's titles will also be class-specific based on forum feedback. Designers are also looking into balancing classes, starting with the Darkness Assassin and the Kinetic Combat Shadow, addressing issues with survivability and damage in the class. If you've been feeling squishier or less resilient or noticed oddities with abilities, you can take part in the thread yourself. Early versions of these changes have already been rolled out to the test servers for the coming update. [Thanks to Mikey Moo for the tip!]
Hyperspace Beacon: Handling SWTOR exploits
On this week's Hyperspace Beacon, I'd like to discuss the exploit issues that have popped up in Star Wars: The Old Republic as of late. Admittedly, the widespread exploit that SWTOR recently experienced wasn't gamebreaking, and it certainly didn't fracture the economy as exploits in other games have. In fact, I don't even think that a rollback or anything severe was even considered for this particular exploit. However, the community team mentioned some things in its handling of the situation that made me wonder about exploits and cheats that violate the intent of the game designers. I don't know that I will have all the answers in regard to how to handle specific situations, but I really intend for this to be a conversation starter. I want to read your thoughts in the comments.
EA Sports to send prizes to cheated junior Lions fan
On a scale from one to "wow, really?", where would you rank someone representing a football team who denies a copy of Madden 15 to a child for wearing the jersey of the opposing team? We ask because that's precisely what happened when the Dallas Cowboys took on the Detroit Lions last week. Amarillo radio station KISS FM 96.9 reports that prior to the football showdown, 10-year-old Roman participated in a game of musical chairs in hopes of snagging the grand prize: a copy of Madden 15 for PS4. Roman won fair and square, but when it turned out he was wearing a Detroit Lions jersey, he was promptly denied his prize and made to re-do an (almost surely rigged) round, where he lost. This was on a stage in front of a crowd of gathered spectators, by the way. As if that wasn't humiliating enough, his consolation prize seals the deal: the first season of Batman: The Television Series (the Adam West version, to clarify) and a Led Zeppelin CD. Because what kid doesn't enjoy '60s camp while listening to "Immigrant Song"? Roman's story has a happy ending, though. After learning of the incident, EA Sports tweeted the picture you see above. So Roman will now be receiving not only a copy of Madden 15 for PS4, but a console to play it on and a Lions mini-helmet signed by receiver Calvin Johnson. So, to come back to our original question, what value would you assign the contest organizers? [Image: EA Sports]
SWTOR devs looking at lag issues, prepping 3.0.2 and 3.1 updates
BioWare reps are all over Star Wars: The Old Republic's official forums as the week winds down. Thus far we've gotten an announcement about the game's 3.0.2 update which is scheduled to go live on January 13th. We also got a heads-up regarding the 3.1 update currently on the test server. Finally, community manager Eric Musco chimed in with a lengthy post detailing what BioWare is doing about the prominent lag issues introduced with game update 3.0. [Thanks Mikey Moo!]
Appeals court sides with ex-NFL players in Madden likeness suit
A federal appeals court struck down Electronic Arts' appeal to dismiss a 2010 lawsuit in which retired NFL players alleged that the publisher used their likenesses without permission in Madden NFL 09. A three-judge panel unanimously declined EA's motion to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of First Amendment protections under "incidental use." Madden 09 included over 140 historic NFL teams as well as the stats and positions of thousands of retired athletes to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, and EA allegedly altered jersey numbers and removed the players' names to avoid paying licensing fees, according to the August 2010 lawsuit. The judges referred to another recent likeness lawsuit in the opinion, in which former college athletes sued EA in May 2009 over the use of their likenesses in NCAA Basketball and NCAA Football games. EA proposed a $40 million settlement to that lawsuit in September 2013, resulting in those players earning up to $951 for each year their likeness was featured in the games. The publisher added $8 million in expenses related to that lawsuit in May 2014. EA introduced similar First Amendment-based defenses in its appeal for the retired NFL players lawsuit save for one additional argument: That the likenesses were protected under the First Amendment as incidental use. The judges "held that Electronic Arts's use of the former players' likenesses was not incidental because it was central to Electronic Arts's main commercial purpose: to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former National Football League teams." The decision upholds a California court's March 2012 dismissal of EA's attempt to prevent the suit from going to court. Among the plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit is Sam Keller, a former Arizona State, Nebraska and Oakland Raiders quarterback that filed the original likeness lawsuit related to the publisher's college sports games. [Image: EA]
Rumor: BioWare's Shadow Realms 'totally rebooted'
Shadow Realms is "going through big changes and may have been totally rebooted," according to an unnamed source who spoke to Kotaku. BioWare's episodic online action RPG was revealed in August of last year and was hit with an alpha delay on October 31st. A "reliable source familiar with goings-on at BioWare Austin" tells Kotaku that the title was revamped in October and "will now have a full campaign." Why the changes? Apparently BioWare's decision to embrace the integration of EA's digital store and Origin coincided with the decision to reboot Shadow Realms. "Developers at EA take budget hits if they don't use internal technology and services," Kotaku says.
Joystiq Top 10 of 2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Dragon Age: Inquisition presents a world on fire; fire formed from the spark of lovers, the friction of politics, and the heat of a dragon's breath. It is a game that gives players everything they could have wanted from another entry in the classic RPG franchise. It satisfied our appetites for combat, beautiful worlds, thought-provoking narrative, memorable characters and challenging scenarios. And then it somehow made us hungry for more.
Hyperspace Beacon: Five SWTOR predictions for 2015
It's that time again to make my educated guesses on what BioWare will attempt to accomplish in the coming year with Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the last Hyperspace Beacon, I gave my grade card for how I think 2014 went, but now I extinguish the Force ghost of Christmas past and get a visit from the blue-glowy of Christmas yet to come. I don't always get everything right, but I like to make a guess anyway. When you've finished reading my predictions, let's continue the discussion in the comments. I want to hear your thoughts as well.
Joystiq Presents: Dragon Age, Dark Souls and dominatrixes
Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) chats with BioWare Creative Director Mike Laidlaw about Dragon Age: Inquisition. They discuss the influence that From Software's Dark Souls series had on Laidlaw when crafting the developer's latest RPG. Listen to the MP3
Dark Age of Camelot takes aim at group finder and bug fixes
An end-of-the-year community Q&A at Dark Age of Camelot revealed that the team has a lot on the docket for Patch 1.117, including the long-awaited casual group finder and a heap of bug fixes. "We think that focusing our development resources on bug fixing for an entire patch cycle is something that hasn't been done in a long time and is something that will make everyone's gameplaying experience that much better!" Broadsword posted. Other topics discussed include freeing up space in quest logs, plans to update the patcher, and ideas to help out starter guilds. The Q&A even revealed that there will be "official Broadsword player reps" and "scheduled raids of all sorts" for trial accounts, although details on those will be coming later.
The Sims 4 update gets paid time off, adds holiday cheer
EA updated The Sims 4 this week, adding a significant amount of new content to the life simulation game. Your sims can now go after an athletic or business career like Hall of Famer or Business Tycoon and accrue paid time off for any of their occupations, plus they can take family leave from their jobs to celebrate new life entering their families. The developer also changed career objectives, cleaning out repetitive or overly specific goals and tweaking ones that were too difficult to complete. The update also introduces the free, downloadable Holiday Celebration Pack, which adds a wreath, snowman, holiday decorations and festive sweaters to the game. Additionally, sims are now able to eat the fruits and vegetables they harvest from gardening activities, and can also die at venues. EA also fixed a few game-crashing bugs and other issues, such as a crash that occurred when players tried placing roofs away from their lot. Head to The Sims 4's patch notes page to see the full list of changes. [Image: EA]
