You play a bounty hunter (which is think is really cool) but I’m a little curious about where this storyline is going to go and why it’s rated mature. They say this game is definitely created for the adult set. So I want to see more but I guess we have to wait for E3 for that.

It’s a third-person action game built with Unreal Engine 3 as a base, and Lucas Arts has mentioned that the production values are quite high with, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Animation Ltd. and Skywalker Sound all working on the game.

LucasArts president Paul Meegan said, “Star Wars 1313 dives into a part of the Star Wars mythos that we’ve always known existed, but never had a chance to visit.”

Sounds interesting yet still very vague. They also have not released any information regarding platforms or release date. This game was all done in-house Lucas Arts. If you’re 18 or older, you can learn more on their official website but even that is not giving us much more info at this time.

Stay tuned for more news from E3 as we all learn more.

In this Community Blog Post they shared a general update as well as introductions of different members:

As many of you may already know, Community Coordinator Eric Musco will be taking over for Sr. Community Coordinator David Bass as the community liaison to fan sites and guilds. Eric and David have been working closely together over the past few weeks to ensure a smooth hand off. While we’re sad to see David leave, we wish him all the best in his new endeavor.

They go to share some introductions:

My name is Joveth Gonzalez and I’m the Online Community Manager. I’m currently overseeing the development of our new community initiatives, wrangling up blog posts for the community blog, and handling various general day to day community issues. Oh, and I play as a Scoundrel because I love sneaking around.

Sr. Community Coordinator Allison Berryman is heavily involved in writing all of the Patch Notes and in managing the Community Representatives on our forum (they’re the people that help moderate our forums and keep them clean—we’ll be introducing you to them soon). Allison is also active in the forums, so you may have already seen her pop up in various threads. She currently switches between playing a Sage, Operative, and a Juggernaut.

Community Production Coordinator Alyson Bridge, along with Assistant Community Production Coordinator Courtney Woods, prepares and publishes content on SWTOR.com, and coordinates the localization of the website in French and German. Courtney also assists with writing and developing blogs for the Community Blog section of our site. Alyson plays as a Marauder while Courtney plays as a Sniper and Commando.

Community Coordinator Eric Musco, as mentioned above, will act as the community liaison to fan sites and guilds. In addition to that, he will be coordinating our presence at any upcoming shows. He is currently playing as a Trooper.

Community Coordinator Eric Campbell helps Allison with managing our Community Representatives. In addition to that, he handles our social media presence and manages our Social Media Representatives. Eric plays on the dark side as a Sith Inquisitor.

Live Community Coordinator Amber Green makes sure that any issues that develop get escalated to the Live Services team and gets messages out to the community accordingly. She is also on point for handling any community messaging for each maintenance window. Amber currently plays a Jedi Sage.

Finally, we have our European Community Manager Chris Collins and his incredible Community Team over in Ireland. I’ll let them introduce themselves properly in a future post, but they take care of the European community, including the German and French communities. They also help us with the localization of community blogs and other various documents.

While it’s no offense to the new people or new positions, I’m really going to miss the old staffers. Meeting David Bass and Stephen Reid in person here in Austin probably adds to my bias but really, I hate to see them go.

It’s a brief intro to the team and for those who love the game, I suppose it’s time to welcome them with open arms and trust them to do a wonderful job just as those who came before them had done. (Not everyone on the team there is new.) They are promising us many great new things with 1.3 and beyond. So what do you think about the new team and positions?

A new Star Wars game, you say? Hmmm… many might be skeptical but for Star Wars gamer fans, this is a big announcement. While the full details will be unveiled at E3, we can expect to learn a little more tomorrow night.

LucasArts revealed on the Star Wars Facebook page that an announcement of the game will be made on Spike TV this 31st of May at 10pm PST, with the full announcement and presumably the details to be revealed at E3 later on next week.

“Riddle:

What is something that will be announced by Spike, fully unveiled at the E3 Expo, and has to do with Star Wars gaming?

The answer to the riddle will be yours – tune into Spike this May 31st at 10pm PST.”

This will be the first Star Wars game created by LA in-house since The Force Unleashed 2 so if you’re a big fan of Lucas Arts games, then you will probably look forward to this one. Stay tuned and if you miss it tomorrow, check back in with us for more details.

Today, Star Wars: The Old Republic: Deceived by Paul S. Kemp is out for its mass market paperback release. The book was original released in hardcover last year, and you can read our review of the book here.

The book follows Darth Malgus who is one of our main characters in SWTOR. Here’s a little plot description refresher courtesy of Amazon:

“A Sith warrior to rival the most sinister of the Order’s Dark Lords, Darth Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace will transform him into something far more heinous—something Malgus would never want to be but cannot stop becoming, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching. Her name is Aryn Leneer—and the lone Jedi Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master. Now she’s going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book.”

If you are interested in knowing more, you can check it out over at Amazon were  you’ll find an excerpt from the first chapter, aswell as available the book in  Kindle and audio format

BioWare have taken the servers down for scheduled maintenance. The servers are still not up, and the maintenance have been extended a few times already. Do I smell patch 1.3 coming up on the public test servers?

General

• Optimizations have been implemented that decrease instances of crashing to desktop.
• Any players required to change a character’s name due to Customer Support request must now make all name changes before logging in with any characters on a server.

Classes and Combat

General

• “Heroic Moment” abilities no longer persist after players log out or transition areas.

Companion Characters

General

• Corrected an issue that could cause Companion Characters to appear without a head when wearing certain headgear.

Flashpoints and Operations

General

• Boss encounters no longer drop rewards until the entire encounter has been cleared of enemies.

Flashpoints

• Corrected an issue that could prevent Flashpoint mission steps from updating properly if players were disconnected during a Flashpoint.

Operations

• Players can no longer bypass the lockout timer for some boss encounters.

Eternity Vault

• Corrected an issue that could prevent players from receiving mission credit upon defeating Soa.

Explosive Conflict

• After defeating Firebrand and Stormcaller, players now collect rewards from the Firebrand Battle Tank rather than a loot chest.

Missions and NPCs

Missions

World Missions

Belsavis

• Breakthrough: Corrected an issue that prevented mission objectives from being completed in a group unless the group leader was the first to interact with the objective object at each point .
• Wrong Savior: The Solitary Confinement area is no longer plagued by a level 50 Malfunctioning Guardian Droid.

Corellia

• The Lucky Lancer: The mission step “Secure the Landing Site” will now update as intended when players enter the Corellian Museum of Starships.

Ilum

• First Strike: Players who abandoned this mission after Game Update 1.2 can now speak to T9-M6 on the Imperial Fleet to regain it.
• Crystal Ball: Players who abandoned this mission after Game Update 1.2 can now speak to Lieutenant Ha’laa on the Republic Fleet to regain it.

Nar Shaddaa

• Tempting Fate: Players on the step “Access the Security Terminal” are no longer able to repeat part of the conversation.

Tatooine

• The Thing Czerka Found: Corrected an issue that prevented players from completing or abandoning this mission.

Class Missions

Jedi Knight

• An Unthinkable Alliance: Players on this mission have had their progress reset, and abandoning the mission during the step “The Emperor’s Fortress” will no longer prevent players from completing the mission after it is reacquired.
• Fallen: Group members can no longer leave the Korriban Flame station.

Smuggler

• Heist of the Millennium: Players are now able to use their starship to travel to the Imperial Treasury Ship during this mission after traveling there one time via the Nar Shaddaa shuttle.
• The Final Score: Players are now able to use their starship to travel to the Regnant during this mission after traveling there one time via the Corellia shuttle.

Imperial Agent

• The Star Chamber: Players who destroy the codex and fight the Sith Lords aboard the station can now enter the Tenebrous to complete this mission. Those who were unable to enter the Tenebrous before patch 1.2.5 must reset this mission before completing it.

Trooper

• A New Player: Exiting the initial conversation by using ESC no longer blocks players from using their holoterminal.
• Welcome Party: Exiting the initial conversation by using ESC no longer blocks players from using their holoterminal.

Bounty Hunter

• Number One With a Bullet: Players on this mission have had their progress reset and can now complete the mission if they use their player ship to leave the Founder.

PvP

Warzones

General

• Corrected a server-side issue that could prevent Warzone matches from being created.
• Warzones now end early if team populations become too imbalanced.

Novare Coast

• Fixed an issue that could allow players to become stuck on the Bunker Control Console.
• Players can no longer become untargetable by entering bunkers while capturing bases.

Space Combat

• Corrected an issue that could cause blaster shot damage to be delayed or ignored.

UI

• Corrected an issue that could cause the main UI quickbar to overlap with player portraits.
• Players can no longer assign keybindings to toggle off music and ambient sounds. These can still be adjusted using the sliders in the Preferences Window.
• Players can now purchase both Cargo Hold expansions back-to-back if eligible to do so.
• Players who leave a full Operations Group will no longer appear on the UI to be in a regular group with some members of the Operations Group.
• Sending companions on Crew Skill missions or accepting mission rewards now prevents the player from being treated as AFK.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Republic players are now transported to their ships when selecting the option from the Space Station Shuttle on Belsavis.

Some gamers still know how to have a good time and this Massive RP-PVP Event held on the Progenitor EU Server is a great example of that. The last game that I played where people did role-playing events was World of Warcraft. I was not on an RP server but (often out of boredom), players would get together to do something fun or silly.

We raided Hogger, we met in Elywnn Forest to goof around or we went to gank the lowbies if Elwynn (if we were on the other side). Once we made a huge batch of gnomes and had a naked dance party in the snow. I was never a huge RP-er but I always thought it was fun and interesting and I love to see what others come up with while roleplaying in a game.

While my experiences were short and silly, what these guilds did over on Progenitor was huge and impressive. It’s the kind of thing that proves that video games don’t rot your brain (or not all of them anyway) and it shows the creativity and ingenuity that some gamers still possess today.

Loads of planning and organization as well as creativity went into this event and it had to take many players all wanting the same common outcome in order to work well. I wonder how many people are wanting to transfer to that sever now that they see cool stuff like this happening?

You have to admit, even if you’re not an RP-er, while many are struggling to get a Huttball team to work together, constructing an event of this magnitude is impressive!

About the Event

It lasted over a week and involved the servers biggest and dedicated RP guilds. And it wasn’t actually PvP based on character stats. All players except ‘Heroic Characters’ had between 13-14k HP. Heroic characters such as Guild Leaders (Typically Jedi Masters and Darths in character) could have up to 24k HP. During fights we went for cinematics, people under appreciate the awesome lightsaber parrying in this game when you use your ‘auto attack’ or such as firing blaster bolts at a Jedi and sometimes seeing them bounce back, power spamming was regulated to try and increase time to kill. When a player got to 25% they would /kneel to indicate they are injured, they could be healed by an ally or captured by an enemy sometimes they’d be captured and there was several rescue missions. It was really quite complex but Guild Leaders done well to keep their members inline.

The Empire won this one (And thus in character own Tatooine), but the next planet-wide battle is already being planned I’m told. There were many cool storys inspired by the films during the events and some epic 10 minute duels that were acted out as major keystones in turning the tide of the overarching story. The official organization thread (from Reddit)

Images

They even made an Imgur Album for the best screenshots from the event:

• Loads of Screenys here
• Another Batch of Screenys, Enjoy !

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Annihilation

In addition to the cover image reveal,  SWTOR.com brought us a great interview with Karpyshyn about the new book.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Here’s a snippet of the interview:

Do you recommend that people finish their storylines in Star Wars: The Old Republic before picking up the book?

Annihilation is set after the events of the class stories in Star Wars: The Old Republic, so there are things that I reference and mention that may serve as spoilers to people who haven’t finished the storylines. The balance of power between the Empire and the Republic has changed quite a bit by the time the class storylines in SWTOR are done, and the galaxy is a very different place.

The main protagonist of your novel is Theron Shan, who was featured in the comic book series, Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Lost Suns. Can you give us a bit of background on him and his relation to the rest of the Star Wars: The Old Republic universe?

Theron is Satele Shan’s son, though she gave him up at birth to be raised by her Mentor, Ngani Zho. He’s also a descendant of Revan and Bastila Shan from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic game. However, Theron isn’t attuned to the Force and he isn’t a Jedi – he’s actually one of the top field agents for Republic Strategic Information Services. This gives him a slightly different perspective on the galaxy and life in general.

I, for one, am pretty excited about it. I’m a fan of Star Wars lore and a fan of Drew’s writing. November is still pretty far away but I expect that as we draw closer, they will continue to offer sneak peeks into the book. Maybe we’ll get a couple of bonus chapters like with the last book. We’ll keep you updated!

Read more.

SWTOR.com put out this call for testers:

Game Update 1.3 is almost ready for deployment onto the Public Test Server. We still need to finalize a few things, but we wanted to let you know that the Public Test Server will be coming down soon so that we can prep Game Update 1.3 for PTS deployment. You can expect the Public Test Server to come back up with Game Update 1.3 in the next few weeks.

They said that 1.3 will be focused around the Group Finder function that helps you get other players to group up with for Flashpoints and Operations more easily. There will also be more updates and content added to the Legacy System. For example, there will be character perks that you can purchase with Legacy points.

So if this sounds good and you want to be one of the first to see and play the new content, you’re going to have to apply for it. Here’s how.

BioWare added:

If you would like to help us out in testing Game Update 1.3, please visit the following link and follow the directions within:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PTSCopySWTOR

We cannot guarantee that every character will copy to the PTS successfully, however we can assure you that characters on Live servers will not be affected in any way should the tool fail.

Please do not contact Customer Support with questions regarding PTS Character Copies, as they will be unable to assist you at this time.

If you saw the drama unfolding live, you know how funny it was that a BioWare GM apparently threatened action against world PvPers on the Fatman (a PvP server). The alleged threats were done in general chat channels which these appalled players took screenshots of (good going guys!).

When they first brought the matter to the forums, they were accused of making it up and their accounts were yet again threatened.

Joveth Gonzalez, Associate Online Community Manager said the investigation showed no proof of their claims against this BioWare staff member.

At first it seemed like yet another troll attempt on the game and at this point, with subs and popularity dropping, is there really any need for that?

But then…

The drama was not yet over because Gonzalez came back to report that a further investigation proved the accusations against the BioWare GM to be true!

Ouch, BioWare… that’s not good.

BW reps are not supposed to talk in general chat channels and threatening and harassing these players on a PvP server for PvPing in open world PvP is well… stupid.

Gonzalez assured the CM in question would be “dealt with accordingly” so here’s thinking someone is going to be looking for a new job. The players who were affected were getting a sincere apology and phone call from BioWare customer service. I’m willing to bet they tossed in some free game time or some sort of compensation as an extra apology.

As for the offending employee, why do you think he did it? Was it an honest mistake or someone hopped up on power who took things too far?

Should higher level players be able to “gank” lower level players in open-world PvP? When does regular fair PvP turn into player harassment? These are questions of opinion. If there are no in-game protocols to protect players from a specific location or at a specific level then wouldn’t killing them be “fair play” when on a PvP server?

We want to hear your thoughts!

The discussion had the following topics:

General Presentation of the Game
Previous Updates
Game Update 1.2 Legacy Presentation

The Old Republic said this:

This information was gathered from the available livestream provided by Gamespot and it summarizes the topics discussed in that hour, along with the Q&A. Keep in mind that at the Q&A the answers capture the essence of what was spoken.

The host of this presentation was Emanuel Lusinchi, Technical Design Director for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The discussion included Game Update 1.3 Allies Presentation which tells us more about what we can expect from this update, including:

Group Finder:

• Bonus daily rewards for random selection

• Role icon

• Teleport offer

• Protect the players

- vote to kick players .. requires vote from the other players
- Free Server Transfers
- Free Trial
- Improved Tutorials
- Performance Optimizations
- Mission hyperlinks in chat
- Keep original group after Warzone
- “Same vs Same” Alderaan Civil war
- Per Character Legacy Perks

Many of these features players have been waiting since launch or shortly after for so it should definitely improve morale in the game when this finally comes out. Read the full article of the presentation to learn more about what was discussed.

Of all the features we know are coming so far in 1.3, which are you the most excited about?

Read more.