For those of you awaiting news about the upcoming Guild Summit in Austin and whether or not your guild was invited, BioWare has given us an update on the official SWTOR blog. They have received the applications and should have responses coming out to everyone soon: Thank you to all of the guild leaders who submitted applications to attend the first Guild Summit in Austin. We are currently reviewing guild applications and will be responding back to everyone who applied in the next few days. For those who are unable to attend the Guild Summit for one reason or another, we’re very happy to announce that we will be providing a livestream of select events during the Guild Summit, including developer presentations and feedback discussions. These livestreams will allow players from around the world to observe and participate in some of the event discussions as well. As a reminder, the…
News
Announcing The Old Republic Guild Summit
Good news in from BioWare this week. They have announced the first ever SWTOR Guild Summit, hosted right here in Austin (where I just happen to be) in March of this year. Guild leaders from around the world will gather with developers from BioWare Austin to talk about the game and its future. It’s by invitation only but yours truly is hoping to be there (*cough* cough* BioWare) and if not, I will at least bring you all the updates as I find out about them. The update was announced on the official News feed for SWTOR: Guild leaders (or a designated officer in the event of a guild leader being unable to attend) will participate in Q&A sessions with developers, roundtable feedback discussions, and will get a preview of some upcoming game features. The goal of the summit is to facilitate an open discussion between guild leaders and the…
Is SWTOR PVP Broken?
Recently there have been a lot of complaints about PVP in SWTOR and not all of them are just from hardcore PvPers who don’t like the way things are set up in SWTOR. In fact, there are many bugs and legitimate complaints that lead a gamer to ask, “Is PvP in SWTOR broken?” MMO Crunch has a piece that asks “Where’s the PvP?” and brings up a pretty good question about the lacking world PvP in SWTOR. I have to agree with the author since I play on a PvP server and have yet to run into a PvP encounter in the open world once so far and I’ve been playing since pre-launch. MMO Crunch says: “The problem with the open PvP zones is there is absolutely no incentive for players, which is why they’re empty. Why bother in a open zone when you can queue up for a warzone…
SWTOR “fastest in history” MMO to 1 million subscribers
Star Wars: The Old Republic “fastest in history” MMO to 1 million subscribers – or so says Geek.com. I am not surprised in the slightest to hear of these statistics. Even if I wasn’t a personal fan of the game, it’s easy to follow the history of the game to date and see the great popularity of it thus far. It has the makings of an incredible, stat-breaking game or a failure of epic proportions if it lets the gamers down. So far, it’s leaning towards the former. Sure there are gamers who just aren’t that impressed with SWTOR and that’s ok. To each his own, right? But still, there are millions who are into the game and appreciate it for what it is and what it might be. Can you believe that SWTOR has 1 million subscribers already? This makes it the fastest MMO to reach this feat. Geek.com…
SWTOR Damage Meters Coming Soon
Like to analyze your game stats? Want to keep track of how much damage you do? Trying to get your guild “raid-ready”? If you agree that SWTOR has been lacking in the stats area, then you will be happy to hear the news that Massively reports on upcoming changes and additions to SWTOR. Massively tells us: Players on the Star Wars: The Old Republic official forums have dug up a Fansite Summit Q&A session with the game’s lead combat designer Georg Zoeller in which he suggested that some new features will be coming to the game post-launch for those who want to ensure they’re getting the most out of their character builds. During the talk, Zoeller claimed that combat log parsing and other such performance analysis features were “very high on [BioWare’s] priority list.” This sounds really promising, especially to the type of MMO gamer who wants those stats and…
Guild HQ Update Coming Today
SWTOR tweeted this weekend, “Eager to find out what server your #SWTOR Guild will be placed on? Your Guild HQ update is coming on Monday!” So we’re all awaiting the news but boy are they cutting it close on this one! Since early access is supposed to begin on Tuesday, this is cutting it really close for guild leaders to get the info and organize things with their guild. However, it doesn’t really matter since as soon as you log in your character that is signed up with that guild, you will gain access to wherever the guild is at. Your guild will be assigned to a server, not the player so when you log in to the server (and faction) your guild belongs to, you will be automatically in the guild. You are still free to make alts and place them on any server you choose. SWTOR Twitter feed…
The Sith Inquisition: Kotick Attacks The Old Republic; Experts Fight Back
In a recent articles , Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, publicly stated that he felt The Old Republic had little real chance of success, not only because Lucasarts was going to drain most of the revenue their direction, but because the amount EA needs to receive in the number of subscriptions from launch or withing one quarter of launch is simply too high. He went on to describe other minor points of error he felt were important, but they simply weren’t important enough to be restated here. Experts immediately retorted with accusations that Kotick, despite being one of the biggest heavy hitters in the industry, had no real information or facts to back up what he was saying. One analyst, Michael Pachter was quoted as saying, “Based on used commentary and user surveys, the profit potential for The Old Republic is high.” This outpouring of support from industry experts begs the…
The Sith Inquisition Marches Onward
Greetings swtorstrategies.com, we are The Sith Inquisition. Myself and the rest of my team are all diehard Imperials, and would rather shed our own blood as Sith than let the Republic overcome us. For a few weeks now we’ve been putting out Empire side news and opinion updates, recently being enhanced by a few pieces of beta video content, and now we’re happy to be invited to do a weekly column right her on swtorstrategies.com. You can look forward to a lot of news and opinion on the dark side and the Empire, although we do also like to put out general news content when it’s applicable. One thing we’ll be doing is short news broadcasts through twitter at least once a week, possible coinciding with the posts we’ll be putting up here. We’ll also be keeping you up to date on major roleplay and PvP activities that we’re emailed…
Activision Questions Star Wars: The Old Republic’s Chances at Profitability
The days are counting down to the December 20th launch of SWTOR and as many are getting excited about the upcoming MMO, there are others who don’t quite fall into all the hype. Some are predicting SWTOR might not do as well as predicted and that even if it does, there won’t be much room for profit for EA with such an expensive game that they also have to share licensing rights with to Lucas Arts. Will there be any room left for profit from SWTOR? Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick says EA Will Lose Out with The Old Republic but could he be right? There’s no surprise that there are skeptics when it comes to SWTOR. In fact, with any big thing, there are going to be those who oppose it but how much truth might there be to the questioning? Kotick made his remarks about SWTOR at the Reuters…
Last Chance to Finalize Your SWTOR Guild
This is your last opportunity to finalize your SWTOR guild before Early Game Access begins! Phase 3 of our Pre-Launch Guild Program had begun a few weeks ago and according to the news reminder from the official SWTOR site, you are running out of time to finalize your guild. If you are a guild leader, now is the time to make sure you have everything in order for launch. If you have at least 4 members of your guild who have preorderd the game and you want to get guild early access, you will need to finalize the last details of the guild before it is too late. This is your last chance to: Make any changes to your guild Ensure your guild meets requirements for deployment into the game Designate your guild’s Allies and Adversaries Review and accept pending guild applications So what do you have to do? “It’s…
Beta client is now available to download!
The Beta client for next weekends beta testing is now available for download. If you haven’t gotten the mail yet, you can go to www.swtor.com/tester and get it. Some people have experienced a problem with the client, as the orange bar below downloading, fills up immediately. This orange bar tracks the total download, the bar above it tracks the download of each piece. So there’s a chance that – if it’s going wrong – it can fill up for a second time before the actual process is done. Restarting the launcher a few times seems to Fix this. If it fills up right away and you leave it be thinking you can come back in a day to the downloaded client you could actually come back to find it redownloading itself for the third time without actually installing. Another issue is that people “down under” get an error message along…
EA changes Origin EULA
Gamers have been ticked off since the news got around that EA’s Origin basically contained spyware. GameSpot reports that EA has now changed the Original EULA. But is this enough for some people? According to the GameSpot report: “Earlier this week, Electronic Arts became a subject of controversy after customers took exception to the end-user license agreement in the publisher’s Origin downloadable game service. While EA did not return requests for comment at the time, it did amend the EULA in question in ways that may address some of the users’ concerns.” The current agreement now says that “EA would never sell your personally identifiable information to anyone, nor would it ever use spyware or install spyware on users’ machines. We and agents acting on our behalf do not share information that personally identifies you without your consent, except in rare instances where disclosure is required by law or to…
GamesCon 2011 EA Updates
The Electronic Arts press conference this morning at GamesCom 2011 brought some exciting news in the world of gaming. Many were anxiously awaiting this press conference from Cologne, Germany to see what was new and when to expect it. Here is a blow-by-blow of the news conference highlights: First, they announced a brand new FIFA Street title for the sports gamers that is expected early in 2012. Next up they announced Need for Speed, The Run. This sounds like a fun title for racing fans that also like a bit of danger. The demo showed an avalanche falling on the road as the racers tried escaping. Next, BioWare takes the stage to drop a huge bomb. Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes will be released in the fall, and players can sign up for the beta testing now by going to their website. The game is head to head, but this…
Top 5 Questions and Answers from Comic Con
San Diego Comic Con gave us all one more glimpse into SWTOR and what we have to look forward to. There were interviews, panels and Q&A questions like never before as we hear the news of pre-orders opening and we grow closer and closer to an actual release date. So what were the top five questions from Comic Con? What about the top five answers? It seems like with every question that gets answered, three more questions open up. It’s exciting but frustrating at the same time as we near the eventual release date. The Tor Report brought us the top five questions and answers from SDCC and you can check out the full list for yourself. Here are some highlights: Mass testing will begin in September. The appearance of companions will be customizable. Info on how the two factions will interact. More questions: Will the pre-order digital item perks…
Actual Confirmation – No Region IP block
When it comes to region blocks and no SWTOR on initial release to certain areas of the globe, there have been many, many questions. Allison Berryman, Senior Community Coordinator for SWTOR attempted to clear up some of the questions on the official SWTOR forums. In a post from earlier, Berryman explains: “Hello everyone. We know that you have questions about this topic, and we hope to have more clarification for you all very soon. For those who may not have seen Stephen Reid‘s tweets from this weekend regarding some of these subjects, I’d like to share that information here. Regarding whether the game will block players from some regions by IP address: currently, there is no plan to block players from the game by regional IP blocking. Playing on servers physically distant from your location might mean you experience some issues with latency, but at this time we don’t plan…
No Australia Pre Orders
We wrote back in June about the rumors of SWTOR being delayed in Australia and it seems like there must be some truth to this rumor. When you go to the SWTOR Pre-Order site, as many were doing today, there are no options for Australia. If you’ve gotten the dreaded: “Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ is not available in your region” Then pre-order is not going to be available in your region; at least not yet. This has some Aussies pretty upset about the news and it wasn’t long before threads were popping up about it. The biggest question from those in the limited regions like Australia, New Zealand and Latin America is “why?” Static52 even brings us a fun little cartoon that expresses exactly how most feel about the issue. Stephen Reid, Senior Online Community Manager, came through with an official response today on the forums: “To all of…
SWTOR FTW Weekly: Comic-Con, Revan, Intro Crawls And More
FTWBroadcasting has just brought us the first edition of SWTOR FTW Weekly, a weekly update on all the best articles, news and more about SWTOR. They will be bringing us a video every week to recap the news and events from that week so you can stay updated on everything about SWTOR as it happens. This week talks about the predicted launch of sales for TOR by Pachter which we brought you this week. Next up is the biggest news this week of Comic Con San Diego. Preview night starts on July 20th and the event runs from July 21st- 24th so you can bet there will be a lot of exciting news coming out of that event. The video also recaps some of the info that will be covered at SDCC such as a panel and some new reveals. There will also be a promotion with free Revan…
Is The Old Republic a “WoW Clone”?
According to Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz, SWTOR is just another “WoW clone”. After the hands-on at E3, Cowen slammed the game, calling it “highly derivative” of World of Warcraft. Despite promises from EA/Bioware that the title represents a major step forward in MMO design, what we saw was essentially a World of Warcraft clone with Star Wars character skins and the BioWare RPG nice/nasty dialogue tree mechanism bolted on for non-player character conversations,” he said. BioWare responds to the criticism and Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk insisted the game is shaping up nicely, and its E3 hands-on showing sparked positive feedback. In an interview with EuroGamer, they counter the accusations that TOR is just another WoW clone and describe how their game is unique, again with a focus on the content. Actually, Eurogamer says they counter it but I don’t actually see any reference at…
SWTOR in Australia and NZ: Delay Rumors
While it’s been discussed before, there are new facts in the equation regarding a possible launch delay for SWTOR in Australia and New Zealand. The original source of the most recent rumor? Hex from Good Game. She tweeted: “Unfortunately we missed out on Star Wars: The Old Republic- but the game’s been delayed for Australia- probs another E3 before release.” This one simple tweet would cause quite an uproar as fans wanted to know where the information was obtained from and what it meant. Hex later said the info was via their Australian PR agent when her team was trying to get a dev interview. She adds, “Only US and Europe this year I was told” TOROZ contacted David Bass at Bioware to get some clarification on this rumor nad were told the expected- Bioware doesn’t comment on rumors and “launch regions” have not been announced yet. So with that,…
All 106 Star Wars Books to Go e-Book Format
If you’re ready to get your Star Wars fix in an electronic book format, then you are in luck! Random House and Lucasfilm recently released the news that all Star Wars books will now be released as e-books. There are currently 30 Star Wars titles available via e-book. However, beginning June 28, all 106 will be available for download. Now it will be easier than ever to keep your Star Wars reading collection in one place. You can enjoy them on the go on your favorite e-reader and of course, you can also store them on your personal computer. It’s never been so easy to ready- and enjoy doing it! The Star Wars series of books have been so popular that not a single one has gone out of print in the 30 years since the first one was published. The books have been published under the Bantam…
Free comic book day is coming
Free Comic Book Day is a single day that happens each year on the first Saturday of May. On this day, participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely FREE to anyone who comes into their stores! How cool is that! You should check with your local comic book shop for their participation and rules. Free Comic Book Day in L.A. with have Geoff Johns, Robert Kirkman, Mike Mignola, Steve Niles signings The Core in Cedar Falls is celebrating their 10th year of the event. Owner Mike Blanchard will donate $400 worth of graphic novels to the school best represented at his shop Saturday. The Bay City Times -On free comic day, Cashman’s Comics will have 100 Green Lantern HeroClix game pieces to give away. What is your area comic book store doing? There’s also a Free Comic Book Day app available…
SWTOR Beta testing to hit Europe
According to a report by fansite, ToRWars.com, SWTOR beta testing will soon be on its way to Europe. They report getting an email with the headline: “Prepare for European game testing!” Well, that’s about as simple as it gets, right? The email goes on to clarify: Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ will soon begin a new round of game testing in Europe. Want to be a part of BioWare’s most anticipated game ever? Sign up at swtor.com/tester. So there you go. If you’re reading this from Europe, it’s time to go sign up for the beta. Remember that you need to be 18 years of age and you have to accept the Game Testing agreement. You also have to complete the Game Testing registration process. If you haven’t yet signed up for beta testing and you live in Europe, now would be a good time to do so. No word…
Countdown Begins For Star Wars Blu-ray Details
Proving that there’s somebody out there that can generate worse puns than me, Lucasfilm sent an e-mail message out over the weekend hinting that all the details of the Star Wars saga Blu-ray sets will be revealed on May fourth. The e-mail points to the “May the 4th Be With You – Star Wars Countdown page” on StarWars.com. Underneath the timer is the simple phrase “All Will Be Revealed.” To spare you the math, the exact day and time for the reveal is Wednesday, May 4 at 9am EST/6am PST. Thus far all we know about the Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray is all six films will be available in a single box set as well as the prequel and original trilogies in their own box sets. LucasFilm has also confirmed that all-new deleted scenes will be included and previewed one featuring Luke at the beginning of Return…
First Embargo on the SWTOR Fan Site Summit Drops
This week could mean big news for SWTOR fans all over the globe as the first embargo on the SWTOR fan site summit drops this week. This means those site representatives who attended will be able to start posting information about what they experienced at the summit. Since there was a wide variety of people who attended, it should make for a good variety of opinions and viewpoints on the content from the summit and help all of us gain better insight into what we expect from the game. As we all anxiously await the release of SWTOR, any news is good news at this point and fans will scramble for even the tiniest bit of new information about the game. So what can we expect from the first embargo dropping? It sounds like we will see information on the content that was played at the event, which will include…