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LotRO's Wardens get grace period to adjust to stat changes
Lord of the Rings Online's Wardens are understandably nervous about the big stat changes coming to the class in Update 10. To help clear up any confusion, Turbine's posted a dev diary crunching the numbers and outlining how the change will roll out. The big change is that the Warden's primary stat will switch from might to agility, and the class' primary form of avoidance will switch from blocking to evading (although the Warden's shield will still provide plenty of the former). As a result, one block-based trait is being reworked to feature evading, and the devs are looking for ways to beef up Wardens' mitigations now that might is no longer a primary stat. Because the change will impact Wardens who have stocked up on plenty of might gear, Turbine is offering a lengthy grace period to allow the class' players to start switching over to agility gear while keeping both might and agility as primary stats. The grace period is said to last the full length of Update 10 and perhaps longer.
Funcom extends grace period for pre-order customers
There's nothing quite like the real world for gumming up the operations of the fantastical one. Some players of The Secret World pre-ordered the game and haven't yet received their retail copy, which is important because the grace period for playing without entering a retail key isn't a very big window of time and players were beginning to get antsy. In response to those concerns, Funcom announced that the grace period for pre-order key entry has been extended by 24 hours, allowing more people to slide in under the deadline. It's not an unusual step to take because launch-time distribution is known to be totally sucky. In a similar vein, some of the pre-order benefits -- the Egyptian Cat in-game pet, an exclusive in-game t-shirt, and an in-game ring -- are also extended to customers who enter their retail or digital game keys up until the end of today, July 6th. While that may not thrill true pre-order customers who liked being special snowflakes, that cat is darn adorable and everyone should get one.
Star Wars: The Old Republic goes dark in preparation for launch
It's as if a million gamers cried out in... you know what? We've done that joke too many times, as has everyone else. We're officially declaring it off-limits for the remainder of this game's history. It's a trap, trust us. And you thought that intro smelled bad... on the outside! OK, it's all out of our system -- as is Star Wars: The Old Republic. As the game nears its official December 20th launch date, BioWare is bringing down both the servers and the website in preparation for the momentous event. From 7:00 p.m. until 12:01 a.m. EST, SWTOR will be inaccessible. BioWare says that as the game comes back online at midnight, the studio will be adding "a large number of new servers" to facilitate the influx of launch players. Even so, the studio predicts that queues on popular servers will be present and urges players to consider rolling characters on lesser-populated realms. Because of the recently instituted grace period, early access players have until 3:00 a.m. EST on December 22nd to register their product codes or be cut off from gameplay.
BioWare announces SWTOR grace period, scheduled maintenance windows
Put down your torches and pitchforks, Star Wars: The Old Republic early access players. Greg Zeschuk stopped by the official SWTOR forums today in order to announce that the team has listened to the cries for a grace period from those who may not have access to their boxed copies of the game come launch day. In response, BioWare has granted players a two-day grace period from launch. What this means is that players have from the beginning of launch on December 20th until 12:01 a.m. EST on December 22nd to enter their game registration codes. It's also worth noting that the team has announced three scheduled maintenance windows spanning from tomorrow until December 22nd. The first maintenance period will take place on Friday, December 16th, beginning at 3:00 a.m. EST, and it is "expected to take no more than two hours." The second window will begin at 7:00 p.m. EST on December 19th and will mark the end of early access. The final scheduled maintenance window will take place on December 22nd at 3:00 a.m. EST. So keep that in mind, TOR players, as you plan your play times. For the full details, head on over to the SWTOR official site.
