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SWTOR brings back the Rakghoul event
What's both the most terrifying and exhilerating thing that could happen this Halloween? For Star Wars: The Old Republic players, it might just be the return of the Rakghoul Resurgence. The event is currently live and will run for a week or so. There are a few tweaks to the popular event, such as two new housing decorations to purchase (because everyone wants a plague bulb in hers or his living room, right?) and a brand-new world boss to fight. Toxxun, the world boss, is located in Axial Park and drops a cute little plague pet.
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR guild ships and Rakghouls
This weekend was full of space zombies and capital ships in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I ended up dividing my time between the live servers hosting the Rakghoul event on Tatooine and attempting to make the most out of having a guild ship on the public test server. Unfortunately, my guild's capital ship fell victim to the Bermuda Triangle bug that makes ships completely disappear, and I wasn't even able to buy a new one. I chalk that up to testing. And I certainly will not cry foul because of it. Besides, the ship was eventually restored, just not in time for my guild to really make any headway in the conquests for this week. However, I did get to experience the ship some because I was on the SWTOR official livestream last week, and I also created my own guild on PTS to test out the capital ship features. But first, let's talk about Rakghouls.
The Daily Grind: Do you adjust your in-game routine for events?
I coughed my way through a couple hours of Star Wars: The Old Republic gameplay this weekend. When I say gameplay, what I mean is standing at the AH and playing the market while waiting for my companions to finish crafting. And since BioWare's rakghoul plague event is currently a thing, I contracted the exploding green goo glowy eyes disease multiple times courtesy of the people who love to pass it around on Fleet. Eventually I wised up and acquired a stack of those anti-infectants, but not before I thought "hey, I can probably turn this into a Daily Grind!" So, here you go. Do you stop your normal themepark routine to participate in in-game events? Which ones are your favorite? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
SWTOR suffers from the Rakghoul plague again
Last week, we began to see the warnings from Alderaan of wild beasts attacking random citizens in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Today, Massively has discovered that it is in fact a new outbreak of the Rakghoul plague that hit Tatooine nearly two years ago. Addalar Hyland, the director of Galactic Solutions Industries, confirms these reports after sending multiple teams to investigate the attacks. Governments of both the Empire and the Republic are asking citizens to be wary when traveling as the plague is highly contagious. Based on the image above, we discovered that it could be spreading off the origin planet of Alderaan and might have made it to the Imperial fleet. If you have skills that might assist in ridding the galaxy of this lethal plague, we urge you to watch this video below then report to the nearest GSI representative immediately.
SWTOR's rakghoul event starting... soonish?
Do you like space werewolves? Do you like Star Wars? If you answered yes to both of those questions, may I recommend some Dark Horse comics and an old BioWare RPG called Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. You've probably heard of it. If not, surely you've heard of its distant MMO cousin Star Wars: The Old Republic. The latter also features space werewolves rakghouls, and according to a brief community team blurb on the SWTOR forums, the title's recurring rakghoul event is coming soon. BioWare's Courtney Woods wrote earlier this morning that "strange animal attacks have been reported by soldiers serving on Alderaan. An investigation is currently underway." There are a couple of other in-character postings in this thread, but there's no firm date for the event just yet.
Hyperspace Beacon: Star Wars: The Old Republic predictions for 2014
Knowing my luck, when I finish writing this, the marketing team for Star Wars: The Old Republic will release a huge announcement about 2014 that no one saw coming. And it wouldn't be hard for BioWare to release something unknown to the community at large because it's said next to zero about what we should expect for 2014. Normally, BioWare promotes the upcoming features to death. We knew about the Cathar coming at least a year before they actually hit the live servers. Players and fans (and enemies) of SWTOR have speculated wildly as to why the developers have remained silent on the subject, my favorite being that BioWare has run out of content to produce, which kind of reneges on the 10-year plan it touted before launch. Whether or not BioWare has new content in the works, we do know a few things that will be coming, and we also have some super-secret things we can speculate on thanks to some intrepid SWTOR fans. So let's talk about what we do know, what we don't know, and what we think will happen.
Hyperspace Beacon: The summer of SWTOR
Every time I listen to the BioWare developers talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic, I am impressed with how passionate they are about the game. When Producer Bruce Maclean, Executive Producer Jeff Hickman, and Community Manager Eric Musco spoke to us yesterday, they sat on the edge of their seats because of how excited they were about telling us about the next updates coming to their game. Despite the game being a year and a half old, these three appeared to be riding the same hype-train the game launched with. Although these three BioWare employees suggested that the majority of the conversation on the livestream would feature discussion about Game Update 2.2, they ended up highlighting features and events taking place beyond the next patch. The questions they answered, filtered from the forum, Twitter, Facebook and the chatroom, jumped all over the place, but I believe they can be narrowed down to three major categories of concern: events, PvP changes, and the valued subscriber.
SWTOR on the rise and planning more PvP, endgame content
Star Wars: The Old Republic's moon (that's no moon...) is waxing, not waning, says Daniel Erickson. BioWare's lead designer on the project said that rumors of the game's demise are incredibly premature -- and outright wrong. Following Update 1.2 and the Rakghoul Outbreak live event, Erickson reports that player activity in the game is increasing. He said that the studio is working hard to keep its customers happy: "The community has generally been excited about the direction the game is going as we finish up our last must-have quality of life features (group finder, etc) and can start concentrating full-time on creative things like the world events." Erickson said that the live event was kept a surprise to make it "feel organic" and not spoil everything in this age of instant internet sharing. He said that the team took a cue from World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood plague that swept through the game in 2005; the devs tried to channel players' actions to fun rather than griefing. He says that the team discovered that SWTOR had a huge PvP community and has since "turned a huge amount of resources" to developing more content for that side of the game. BioWare's also shifted several team members over to creating more endgame content as the players chew through the stories at an increasing rate.
SWTOR increases Sniper damage, fixes bugs, and cures the Rakghoul plague
Snipers and Gunslingers should be happy about the changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic this morning. Five of their most prominent abilities have received a 5% increase in damage output. With the latest patch 1.2.1, abilities like Snipe, Charged Burst, Aim Shot, and Ambush now have a measurable difference in damage output. Although Snipers and Gunslingers were the only classes to receive a bonus to damage, many other minor and why-is-this-an-issue bugs have been fixed with the introduction of this patch. For instance, each player can add other players to his friends list even if those other players are offline. And that persistent and annoying jet-engine sound heard on Carrick and Vaiken station has been fixed. On a sad note, the Rakghoul plague has come to and end (or is that good news?). Either way, the announcements on the stations have stopped, and the crash site has been fully cleaned up, including the jawa vendor. But chin up, event-fans: Lead Designer Daniel Erickson mentioned on Mos Eisley Radio that although BioWare does not have plans to revive this specific event, there is a whole team specifically dedicated to creating future live events.
Star Wars: The Old Republic hosting a weekend trial while plague expands
If you're one of the few souls that hasn't yet tried Star Wars: The Old Republic just yet, this weekend is your next chance. With the Rakghoul Plague racing across the galaxy, BioWare is inviting potential new players to take a look at the game from April 19th at 1:01 a.m. EDT until April 23rd at 3:00 a.m. EDT. As in previous weekend events, players will be able to pick up their trial characters and continue leveling them in the event that they purchase the full game afterward. Of course, if you're already in the game, you're probably less concerned about new players and more concerned with the aforementioned plague. Darth Hater has assembled a guide for players including the latest updates to this ongoing world event running until April 24th, which should be more than enough to help players unlock rewards and see all there is to see during the outbreak. Just be prepared -- there are probably going to be a lot of new people over the weekend not fully versed in containment procedures.
