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SWTOR dev talks expansion skills, planet, and gear
"Questions you have, hmm? Answers you seek? Go read a dev round-up, you will! Hmmm!" That's the advice that a certain green puppet told us after the Star Wars: The Old Republic: Rise of the Hutt Cartel announcement left a lot to be discovered. Fan site Darth Hater did its good deed of the day by hoovering up and redistributing important dev posts on the forums about the expansion about some of these missing details. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman addressed some of the most common questions, such as the viability of current endgame gear (answer: very viable) and how big this new planet will be. "To give you all a better idea of Makeb's scope," she said, "it's a planet of equal size to our larger planets and it contains a variety of areas -- sprawling mesas, underground caverns, garden estates, and more." Berryman also says that character development is a big part of the expansion agenda: "As part of the new content, every skill tree will be expanding and you can expect significant updates. Players will earn a new skill point with each level, and new skills will be available in each skill tree. Additionally, a new active ability will be introduced for each advanced class."
BioWare defends its decision to not have individual SWTOR server forums
With the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic came a new and improved forum system for the community, and everyone lived happily ever after. Right? Yeah... not so much. It turns out that BioWare neglected to include individual server forums for its many, many, many shards, and this omission has rankled some players who were looking forward to talking amongst their new communities on the site. TOR-Talk got in touch with BioWare to ask about why the individual server forums were cut down to four ruleset forums. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman says the decision was a matter of practicality as there would be too many forums and not enough moderators to go around: "Generally speaking, server forums for many MMOs tend to be largely un-moderated and can become unpleasant to visit." Instead, BioWare hopes that server communities create and moderate their own server-specific sites and forums. "This is also a great opportunity for the community to come together in their own ways – on fan sites and through other resources," Barryman said. "Of course, we want people to visit the official forums, and will use them to provide information that's of specific interest to the community, but we also love to see the community coming up with cool stuff on their own."
SWTOR invites Australia and New Zealand into testing
We know that Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to release in the United States and Europe on December 20th and 22nd respectively. As of yet, however, we do not have a release date for oceanic countries like Australia and New Zealand. We know these SWTOR fans are champing at the bit to get their hands on the game just as much as the rest of the world. Today, hot on the heels of the official European testing announcement, BioWare Community Coordinator Allison Berryman announced that the latest round of testing invites just left the Austin offices. This smaller group is designed to test out the west coast server for a limited time, and much to the delight of players, the group includes players from Australia and New Zealand. Berryman reminds readers that this does not mean BioWare has a defined release date yet for that region, but the community team will let everyone know as soon as it does.
SWTOR launch day questions answered
The community team at BioWare told us that we would know when the train was coming, but it came crashing through our house when half of us were still sleeping. As we reported earlier, Star Wars: The Old Republic set its launch day for December 20th for North America and December 22nd for Europe. All the fans exhaled in relief, then promptly started asking more questions. First off, the Australian and New Zealand launch dates have not been set, and BioWare cannot commit to a launch day yet for that region. However, back in August, Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid posted on the official forums that "There are no plans to 'region lock' or 'IP block' players from the game. You may experience some latency issues if you're not playing in a launch territory." This still holds true today. To prevent signup issues on launch day, log-ins will be throttled. However, pre-order customers will still gain early access to the game. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman reported on the official forum: "The beginning of Early Game Access will depend on a number of factors, including results from our Game Testing Program and Pre-Orders, but there will be multiple days of access." Lastly, in case you missed it earlier, BioWare did announce the subscription costs. It comes as no surprise to most MMO gamers that the first month is free with the purchase of the game. After that it's $14.99 per month (£8.99 or €12.99), $41.97 for 3 months (£25.17 or €35.97), or $77.94 for six months (£46.14 or €65.94). There have been no lifetime subscription announcements as of yet, but we will let you know if we hear anything.
