Patch 1.5

1.5.2 Patch Notes 12/4/2012

Lot’s of fixes this time including 4 quickbar slots for preferred players! Bioware don’t get much love when this game is concerned, but looking at these patch notes, you can tell they are listening and reacting to community feedback. Cartel Market New Additions The Covert Pilot Suit has been added to the Cartel Market! This adaptive armor can be worn by any class at level 1. General A confirmation dialogue is now displayed for Cartel Coin purchases made outside of the Cartel Market. It shares the same “never show again” option as the confirmation for purchases made directly from the Cartel Market. Attempting to purchase an item or unlock your character already owns or cannot use now displays a more appropriate warning dialogue. An issue that prevented some Cartel Market purchases from being delivered correctly has been addressed. Several errors in the French and German Cartel Market tutorials have been corrected. Items…

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1.5.1a Patch Notes 11/28/2012

BioWare had had an extra  maintenance today fixing the companion character bug that has hunted the players since yesterday.  I understand people are unhappy about bugs like this, but the fury on the forums yesterday was unheard off.  In normal software engineering, each time you add a function, you can easily create test cases for it. function x does blah, put in a test case to see if ti does blah. automate it, the result is the same every time. In something like a game, it’s much much much more complex because you aren’t dealing with just the simple output of some code, you are dealing with interpreted behavior of people using many many things chained together. It’s just not simple or feasible to put together a full set of regression tests everything you make some small changes. when you do something like a massive patch or something, sure, test the hell…

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1.5.1 Patch Notes 11/27/2012

As mentioned last week, BioWare has taken down the servers for some Scheduled Maintenance. This time the Customer Support ticket system have been fixed, but now Companion gear does not work. Hopefully this will be fixed asap, or I am afraid that the BioWare forums will become violent. On the bright side,  Major XP Boosts: Discounted 25% to 90 Cartel Coins from 120 Cartel Coins.  It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the f****** century! Check out the patch notes below: General Subscribers are again able to file Customer Support tickets from the Character Selection screen. Cartel Market The following Cartel Market items are on sale! Major XP Boosts: Discounted 25% to 90 Cartel Coins from 120 Cartel Coins. Level 15 Chest Pieces: Discounted 10% to 135 Cartel Coins from 150 Cartel Coins. Medical Probes: Discounted 25% to 375 Cartel Coins from 500 Cartel Coins. The Experimental Flight Suit has…

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SWTOR F2P & Future content interview with Damion Schubert

Dulfy had the opportunity to interview Lead Designer Damion Schubert regarding the F2P option launching yesterday. Dulfy was good enough to take questions from the readers of her blog. reading through the interview I found some of the most interesting key points to be: Armor dyes seems to be in the pipeline No new items to the VIP/Collectors Edition vendors Cathar race will be by purchase only Returning events (i.e. sell your rakghoul items now before the word gets out) Check out the full interview over at dulfu.net or read our small snippet below: What was the biggest challenge in converting such a massive MMO into a FTP model? It would have to be giving away as much as humanly possible to our free to play players, while still ensuring that our subscribers felt like they were getting a great value. Both populations of players are a key component to Star Wars: The Old Republic’s path forward,…

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Known Issues in Game Update 1.5 and Maintenance later today.

As it often happens after a new patch, BioWare will take  down the  servers for an unscheduled maintenance window starting at 2AM CDT. The team also made a forum post regarding issues that they are currently investigating. Edit:  Servers are now back up. Here are the patch notes: 1.5.0a Patch Notes 11/16/2012 General The first level of Legacy experience boosts no longer grant more experience than intended. Resolved an issue that could allow consumables to not be consumed as intended. ———————-  Below is a coopy/paste of  all the issues. You can also follow it over at the official forums here. Hello everyone! We appreciate you joining us to play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, and we hope you enjoy the game. As MMORPGs are large and complex projects, inevitably we do discover issues that may affect gameplay. We’re working constantly to fix anything that will affect the player experience, but for now this…

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Game Update 1.5: HK-51 Activated 11/15/2012

Servers are up after a long looooong maintenance, but finally patch 1.5 is here.  Can’t buy cartel coins yet, though. Currently points to http://buy.swtor.com/us/, which currently only has copies of the game for sale. Below are the patch notes: Highlights Free-to-Play is here! Players can now experience Star Wars: The Old Republic up to level 50 (with certain restrictions) without paying a subscription fee. The Cartel Market is now accessible. Players can use Cartel Coins to purchase boosts, unlocks, cosmetic items, and more! Travel to Section X on Belsavis and learn why the nefarious Dread Guard has seized control of this ravaged area of the planet! Section X can be accessed on Belsavis and via the daily mission shuttles. HK-51 can now be acquired as a Companion Character! A shipment of the infamous Assassin Droids can be found in the wreck of an Imperial transport ship, The Fatality, in Section X. Reactivating HK-51 requires finding…

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Maintenance November 15 : Game Update 1.5

As we announced last week, Game Update 1.5 will launch on November 15, 2015 ( Tomorrow!). We dide’nt know the schedule for the release, but yesterday  BioWare announced the maintenance window for the patch deployment, and this is going to be a long one guys. check out the full announcement on the official forums, or our copy/paste below: BioWare Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for twelve hours on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 from 12AM CST (10PM PST/1AM EST/6AM GMT/7AM CET/5PM AEDT) until 12PM CST (10AM PST/1PM EST/6PM GMT/7PM CST/5AM AEDT). All game servers, SWTOR.com, and the launcher will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than twelve hours, but could be extended. Explore Section X, a brand new area on the prison world of Belsavis, where you will not only embark on a galaxy-wide…

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Developer Dispatch: HK-51 Activated

BioWare have released a new Developer Dispatch regarding the upcoming contents that will be added to the game with update 1.5. In the video, Associate Designer Matt Pucevich and Senior Development Director Bruce Maclean talk about Explosive Conflict Nightmare Mode, the new Section X daily mission area, aswell as the new world boss + phat lewt. Check it out below: Check out the latest Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Developer Dispatch to get a first look at the story behind Game Update 1.5: HK-51 Activated. Watch as they discuss the dangerous missions that await you in the new Section X area on Belsavis. Discover how you can embark on a galaxy-spanning hunt for clues on how to unlock one of the most deadly Assassin Droids, the HK-51 Companion! Take a sneak peak at the final pieces of the Dread Guard gear set and see a rare new mount that your…

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TOR TV: Video Guide to Voiced Emotes on the PTS

The guys over at swtorface.com created a short video showing all the voiced slash commands currently available on the public test server. This is slash commands  like /apologize /cheer, /chuckle, etc etc etc. It’s apparently not complete yet, as it is possible to find more sound files when you data mine the client. In this video you can listen to (and see the actions of) Smuggler, Jedi Knight, Trooper, Bounty Hunter and Imperial Agent SwtorFace will be updating this as more commands become available. You can follow there progress here.

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Developer Blog: Technical Changes in Game Update 1.5

I apologize we are late with this one, but the fact that I live in Denmark, and BioWare have a habit of sending out news when we I sleep, it some times make it hard to keep up. Anyways, enough QQ for now! BioWare’s Technical Artist Ben Cloward, posted a new developer blog yesterday, informing the community about large  technical changes coming with  Game Update 1.5. It’s actually quite interesting that the team use so much energy optimizing the Hero Engine. When Patch 1.5 launches the flora an fauna in the game  is going to be more realistic. Instead of looking solid and therefore unnaturally dark when viewed against the sun, players with their Shader Complexity set to high will notice that leaves and grass will be moderately translucent, allowing sunlight to filter through them.

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Game Update 1.5 PTS Patch Notes 10/29/2012

BioWare have updated the public test servers with a new patch. It’s clear we are getting closer and closer to the release of patch 1.5 and the Free to Play version of the game. We are still not quite there yet though, so today’s normal server maintenance won’t bring it to the live servers. That’s alright though. I think we all want the most polished free to play version of the game as possible. Up until release you also get to play around with the Cartel Market on PTS. for a while yet.  Below are the patch notes: The patch notes published for the Public Test Server are not final and are subject to change. The Public Test Server Patch Notes will be provided in English. The final release notes will be provided in English, French, and German when the content is moved to live servers. Cartel Market and Free-to-Play Prices on some Cartel Market Items have been adjusted…

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DarthHater Data-mined Wookie Life Day! Yes it’s Coming!

Lots of exciting news coming out about 1.5 and upcoming SWTOR news, free to play and the Cartel Market. With all of this, the crew over at DarthHater found something else cool.                   DarthHater discovered something pretty interesting when updating their database yesterday with all the new items included in the PTS patch. They found evidence of a Star Wars-centric holiday event called Wookiee Life Day. How cool is that? This could be a new World Event for the Christmas holiday season. Since the original Star Wars Holiday Special centered around the Wookiee celebration of Life-Day, this gives a lot of opportunity to work this into the game. Here’s the stuff that DarthHater found: Items Life Day Orb Life Day Holiday Holo-Tree Life Day Vestments Life Day Lower Robe Life Day Boots So what do you think? Would you participate in a world event like this? Do you want to see…

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Game Update 1.5 on PTS!

Game Update 1.5 is now live on the public test servers. This is the one were we get our new playable companion: HK-51! This means BioWare really will be delivering new content every 6 weeks –  nice to finally see them delivering on that promise!! below is the press release from BioWare, and below that is data dump of the new patch.  It looks like  HK-51 will be a ranged tank or dps from the new cybertech schematics data mined. Game Update 1.5 is Now Live on PTS! Game Update 1.5 is now live on our Public Test Server! For those of you that already have high level, copied characters on our Public Test Server, we encourage you to explore Sector X, Nightmare Explosive Conflict, and the other new features on the Public Test Server right now. Get on, check everything out, and give us your feedback by posting on the Public Test Server forum. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to…

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