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har nu gjort åtta gubbar som alltså ska täcka de åtta klasserna på Republic sidan

men min main är ju Phyreon - Human Male Jedi Knight

Fan alltså vad svårt det är att köra som Jedi när man får Dark Side points för att flörta med tjejerna i spelet! Känns lite som att jag kommer snöa in på the anakin skywalker way!

Den eminenta siten MMORPG.com fick chansen att sitta och prata med Dallas Dickinson, Director of Production on Star Wars: The Old Republic för att diskutera Game Testing, Early Access, och vad som komma skall för Star Wars: The Old Republic post-launch.

En väldigt givande intervju känner jag spontant!

Intervjun följer nedan (den är rätt lång så se till att luta er tillbaka för en bra läsning):

MMORPG.com: Let's kick things off by talking a bit about Game Testing. The last few weekend tests have seen a huge amount of players hitting the servers. What can you tell us about what you've learned from having so many users hitting your service? Were there any surprises or revelations in terms of what the service will be able to handle?
 
Dallas Dickinson: There were actually, there were mostly positive surprises. There were way fewer surprises than we were bracing for. The servers actually did really, really well. Those who participated in the testing found the experience was relatively smooth. I think, the first night, we had some pretty big queues and we had some queuing technology that we just wanted to tweak, and so we got that working really well. We had a little bit of instability, but nothing resembling what we were expecting. So, actually, the service stood up really, really well, with hundreds of thousands of players. So, it actually braced us quite well for launch.
 
MMORPG.com: So, metrics are fun! Has there been a consistent ratio of Empire vs. Republic populations on test servers? Same for Force users vs. Non-force using classes? Can you talk about what you've seen along those lines?
 
Dallas Dickinson: Without giving exact numbers, I can tell you that it is as we expected. We skew slightly more with Empire players; I think that’s at least partially due to the fact that the players that have been in the testing program are a little bit more hardcore, maybe a bit more into PvP. That’s just my own crazy theory as to why that is. It’s not a huge skew, it’s like a 50 to 55% as opposed to anything broader than that.

And then in terms of class choice, it’s also, we’re a little more than half of people choose one of the four force-wielding classes. So, I think it’s closer to 60%-ish, but again, I’m estimating a little bit. But that’s as expected, it really goes in terms of, you could probably, without having asked me the question listed the order of popularity, what you think the popularity of the classes would be, and you’d be probably right. The expectation is that people are going to first jump in, go straight to a force-user, unless they have a specific, “I really want to be a bounty hunter” kind of mentality, and they’re going to play that. But we’re seeing a whole lot of sampling. So, what people do, is they immediately choose one of those classes, they play for five or ten levels, then they choose another class, and we get pretty broad sampling across the board. I think a lot of players are playing up to four of five of the classes up to level 10 before they choose the one they’re going to ride.

MMORPG.com: Will Game Testers or long-time Game Testers be receiving anything to show off in the live game?
 
Dallas Dickinson: I don’t think we have any official notation for them, but for the most part, these are going to be the first people into the game. We’ve announced previously that our Early Access program is going to favor those who burned codes early, and that’s a pretty 1:1 mapping of people who were in the Game Testing program, so I think that’s the primary way we’re going to be rewarding those folks. Also, these are also the people who know exactly where they want to go and who they want to play when they start.
 
MMORPG.com: Continuing on Early Access, some gamers have noted they may not receive their games on the exact day of launch, but perhaps a day or two later. Will you be offering a grace period for those who have redeemed pre-order codes? If so, how long is the grace period?
 
Dallas Dickinson: The quick answer is there will be announcements related to that in the next day or two, but I can’t actually tell you that. So, you’ll have to see that when the e-mail comes to your inbox, sometime this afternoon, or whenever it comes.
 
MMORPG.com: Will server names be released ahead of launch? The pre-launch guild registration system wasn't able to facilitate the RP-PvP crowd and I imagine this group of players would definitely appreciate being able to plan ahead of the chaos of launch day.
 
Dallas Dickinson: Certainly we’re going to be announcing them during Early Access, but I think we’re going to announce them slightly before Early Access, so people will be able to have some dea of where they want to go. I can’t tell you the exact timing, as that was actually up for debate as of this morning, when we would fully announce at least the opening list of server names. We’re not going to announce all the server names; we’re probably going to only announce the ones we’ll be running during Early Access, and then we’ll announce more as we ramp them up.
 
MMORPG.com: As far as post launch content goes, I know you guys have been fairly locked down on features for launch for quite some time, but I'm sure that hasn't stopped you all from brainstorming or even sitting on tons of things you want to get in post launch. Can you talk about a few of your highest priority features or additions you are looking to add post-launch? How soon can we expect some of these?
 
Dallas Dickinson: What I can say, and I think there’s going to be an announcement to this effect by our very own James Ohlen in the next few days, but most of what we have planned for post-launch is direct feedback we got from our testers. Kind of going on a year in our testing program, it’s really been all about hearing what the players have to say. We have our own huge list of the stuff we think would be awesome to add to the game, but we’re making sure we prioritize based on the feedback we’re actually getting.

So, some of the things I know people have mentioned are, “Hey. When are we going to see more end game content?” Well, we’re absolutely going to be rolling that out and we’re going to be rolling that out relatively quickly and on a schedule people can count on. So the people know that when they really want to be doing cool Flashpoints and even Warzones, they’re going to be getting those on a regular basis.

In terms of features, one of the areas I know people have asked for more features is in our support of guilds. I can’t tell you specifically the extra guild features we’re going to be rolling out, but that’s another place that, again, it’s entirely based on, we also want these features, but getting the feedback from the players and saying, “Hey. You guys have been giving great feedback on the game that is there, and we’re trying to make sure that’s the best it can be, but what are the top five things you as users would really like to see in the first three months, six months, nine months of the game that makes you feel that this is a game that understands you as a user and supports you as a long term player of the game?”
 
MMORPG.com: It's pretty obvious given how much you guys have said about how massive the project is, and how long the game has been in development, that producing (and polishing) the kind of cinematic story content with full voice-overs, cinematic camera angles, and the like is a fairly labor intensive and lengthy task. How are you reconciling this with the speed with which MMO gamers typically consume content? Is this sort of content something you see as sustainable to produce in a timely manner with a live game?
 
Dallas Dickinson: Yeah, I think the, the commitment that we have is that we want to, not just for launch, but to continue to support the best story-driven MMO out there, and a huge part of that is the cinematic storytelling that really differentiates and really makes it feel like a BioWare game. Much of our development time has been spent developing the tools such that our writers, our cinematic designers, our world designers can create that kind of content rapidly and high quality. We’re now in a position, if you asked the tools users, they’d have 20 more things that they’d like, but for production side, I at least have a predictable pace, so that we can say, “Hey. Yeah, this is what we can deliver on a reasonable update basis,” and so we’re planning based on that, and it’s absolutely so that we can make sure that players are still getting that awesome BioWare storytelling that they expect from the game.
 
MMORPG.com: Finally, with just a few days until Early Access begins, do you want to share any final thoughts with fans looking forward to the game?
 
Dallas Dickinson: Really, really, I’m just ridiculously excited. I think your first question was the biggest and most important one to me, in terms of, if you’d asked me a month ago how I felt? I would say, “Well, we haven’t done our really, really big scale testing. There are going to be some things that come out of the woodwork.” And, knock wood, we’ve found most of them, and they were not as scary impactful. So, now I’m just excited to see how players enjoy the game, because we know we have a good game and a fun game, and it’s really a question of whether our service will withstand it, and I think we will!
 

 


 

Det råder fortfarande undringar om när The Old Republic släpps. Ursprunligen var det satt till 22:a december, sedan den 20:e. För er som är osäkra att jultomten kommer att orsaka trafikstockning så nära in på Dagen J finns det dock goda nyheter. Spelet kommer nämligen att finnas tillgänglig för upphämtning i butiker från den 15:e, och för de som har köpt spelet via postorder borde spelet dimpa ner i brevlådan den 15:e också. Observera dock att spelet fortfarande går live den 20:e om du inte har en pre access-kod, då är det bara tuta att köra med 5 dagars försprång alltså

Igår så lyftes äntligen embargot för media och testare att skriva om sina intryck och även att ge ut information till oss andra inte fullt så lyckliga icketestare.

Hittade en artikel som är skriven av Michael Bitton på sidan mmorpg.com, vanligtvis skulle jag inte rekommendera en sådan nyhet här men tycker att när ett embargo lyfts så ska fansen få ta del informationen från de som hårdtestade betan så att vi får insupa så mycket som möjligt.

Njut och läs!

In my various opportunities to play Star Wars: The Old Republic, I’ve never actually played on the Republic side of things, that is, until recently. You see, the kind folks over at BioWare finally allowed the press to sample Star Wars: The Old Republic for an extended period of time and within the comfort of our own homes, though we’ll only be looking at the Republic side of things this time around.

As the team here divvied up our class assignments, I naturally jumped on the Trooper, which was the first class I wanted to play in Star Wars: The Old Republic before I found out there would be an Imperial Agent. Don’t get me wrong, I want to swing a lightsaber just as most of you do, but there is something cool about just being the guy (or gal, in this instance) with a (BIG) gun.

Tell Me a Story

I’m not going to get too specific on some story elements in order to avoid spoilers (though there may be some; you’ve been warned!), but I will touch on the various themes and experiences I played through along the way. Now, with that out of the way…

Your story in Star Wars: The Old Republic begins just like any Star Wars film, with the Star Wars theme blaring as you’re treated to an opening crawl detailing the basic story of your chosen class. Once the crawl completes, the camera pans down into a space scene involving a starship, which is of course a nod to every Star Wars film made. If you’ve never noticed this, well, now you know.

Troopers start out on the mountainous planet of Ord Mantell as a new member of the Republic special forces team Havoc Squad. The first minute or so involved my character being briefed on the situation on the ground by one of my fellow Havoc Squad members while riding aboard a Republic dropship. Things quickly take a turn for the worse as the dropship takes enemy fire, prompting the pilot to make an emergency landing. As the exit ramp opens, I am treated to a wide view of the war torn planet of Ord Mantell before I step out and put my boots firmly on the ground.

Given the warm welcome, it’s pretty easy to tell things are going to get real pretty soon, and BioWare doesn’t disappoint. The soldiers I encountered on my way to the planet’s main Republic base all needed my help, and as they made their desperate pleas for assistance, there was no shortage of the sounds of blaster fire and explosions occurring nearby.

The overall scope of the Trooper’s origin world story centers on the Republic’s struggle against a separatist movement on the planet and the danger of a stolen Republic bomb.  Along the way, I participated in a variety of side quests involving assisting the local population or various members of the Republic military. The class story content and objectives were quite compelling, and the side quests felt fitting, though many of the actual objectives were fairly standard stuff. The addition of story really spices up the formula, however. I certainly can’t stress that enough. If I never see another text box, it wouldn’t be too soon!

The game opened up a lot more once I left Ord Mantell (where I only saw other Troopers and Smugglers) and made my way to Coruscant. Before arriving on Coruscant, I traveled to the Carrick space station in the midst of the Republic fleet. This is the Republic social hub shown off during the TOR main panel at New York Comic-Con last week. The station is indeed filled with vendors, a cantina, class and crafting trainers, and a jump off point to launch Flashpoints. It was a pretty neat spot, but felt sort of inorganic. It almost felt like a bit of a shopping mall in space. Everything is neatly placed and organized in an intelligent and convenient fashion, which is great for gameplay purposes but really not much else.

In order to head to Coruscant, I could opt to take a basic shuttle straight from the station to the planet or a VIP ship called The Esseles, which is a Flashpoint that would eventually bring me to Coruscant at the end. The basic story behind the Esseles is that an important Republic Ambassador is on board and one of the Sith Empire’s top brass is keen on capturing her. As members of the Republic, we’re obviously not interested in giving her up that easily (well, maybe), so this prompts the Imperial Moff to launch a boarding attack on the ship. The result is a fairly awesome dungeon crawl set up for four players to run through, participate in dialogue, and make important choices that directly affect the way certain parts of the Flashpoint play out. The Flashpoint was peppered with all manner of cinematic set pieces, especially the last boss fight, which was absolutely epic to say the least. It was a real hoot to play through it alongside other players.

Dark vs. Light

As I progressed through Ord Mantell and later Coruscant, my morality was challenged in many different ways, often forcing me to choose between making pragmatic but cold decisions when having to weigh the needs of the Republic vs. being compassionate to the struggling local population. In one example, I had to return an AWOL doctor to the Republic and he wouldn’t budge unless we evacuated the many orphans he’d taken under his care as well. I made the call to not expend unnecessary Republic resources securing the whole group, and instead opted to just rescue the doctor. In another instance, a desperate local stole Republic medical supplies, and I had to threaten her with violence towards a child (gasp!) in order to fess up the location of the supplies. I had the choice of being the compassionate sort and giving the supplies to the locals or doing my duty and returning the supplies to my fellow soldiers who needed them just as badly. These are generally the sorts of choices you make as a Trooper.

Other choices tended to test my moral compass in terms of how I would react to questionable behavior by my fellow brothers-in-arms or whether I was open to taking bribes. I felt the type of situations I was put in as a Trooper, and the choices I was offered, really helped make the experience feel authentic. There are many mature, hard choices to make here. The grunt on the ground has a lot of freedom to do things without his superiors knowing (think Mass Effect’s Shepard), and it’s up to you to decide what you do with that freedom. It’s not as simple as whether you feel like being sadistic enough to Force Choke or Force Lightning some poor sap because he’s giving you lip.

I was often faced with multifaceted choices that really got me thinking about what I’m doing and what the best course of action is. I often found myself both surprised and impressed with the writing of the content when it came to moral choices on the Trooper. It’s really telling when I go into a situation with my mind made up on what choice I’m going to make and only to be convinced by an NPC to reconsider the implications of my actions against my actual intentions. 

The Gal with the Gun

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, let’s talk about the Trooper’s basic play style for a moment. On a basic level, the Trooper uses an ammo resource system where each ability uses a certain amount of ammunition (except for your first ability, which can be spammed) and you’ll have access to a wide gamut of blaster shots and ordnance, ranging from rifle-fired rockets to sticky bombs, to riddling your enemies in a barrage of fully automatic fire. Ammo can be reloaded in combat using a certain ability, but the ability is on a lengthy cooldown so it isn’t meant to be used willy-nilly. Otherwise, ammo regenerates in combat on its own.

Later, (as in level 10) the Trooper can choose between the Vanguard and Commando Advanced Classes, which open up entirely new avenues of gameplay options. Both Advanced Classes can specialize in damage-based roles, but between the two, only the Vanguard can fulfill the tank role and only the Commando can play the medic. In a DPS role, the Vanguard sticks to medium to close range (including melee) abilities and makes use of a blaster rifle. The Commando, on the other hand, walks around with a gigantic sort of blaster minigun. I’m personally interested in the Vanguard, but I took some inspiration from Brick of Reilly’s Rangers in Fallout 3 and thought the idea of a chick wielding a giant minigun sounded cool so I went with the Commando.

Leveling the Trooper up to 10 was honestly not as satisfying as I’d hoped, as I felt reliant on an ability called Explosive Round to do the most of my damage. It’s basically a rifle fired explosive that does a ton of damage and serves as kind of the bread-and-butter of my attack chain.

Then I unlocked Commando and received my assault cannon.

Let’s just say that if you enjoyed mowing down people in Fallout with a minigun or love the feeling of the Heavy in Team Fortress 2, the Commando really doesn’t disappoint. The whole dynamic of the Trooper gameplay immediately changed once I became a Commando, transforming me into a walking harbinger of death and destruction, able to clear entire rooms with sweeping hails of blaster fire and ordnance. I’m being literal here. There were times when I’d walk into a large room filled with enemies and between myself and my companion (who also wields an autocannon), we’d honestly just blow the whole thing up. There is something seriously satisfying about pumping unrelenting high speed blaster bolts into some poor guy's chest and watching him convulse like Chunk doing the truffle-shuffle in The Goonies. The few enemies who managed to survive the blaster fire and run up to my face were  often treated to an awesome cone lightning attack from the end of my weapon that felt incredibly satisfying and was also visually appealing with some wicked particle effects. If for some reason they managed to survive, I could beat them in the face with the business end of my cannon or detonate a Concussive Charge to get anyone around me out of my face.

Brothers in Arms

Companions in The Old Republic seem to ‘just work’. So far, they seem pretty intelligent in combat, with the exception of the cone lightning attack I mentioned earlier. My first companion also gets this attack and if I set him to use it in combat on his own, he will often fire it off when the enemy is way out of range. But hey, that’s beta for you, right? Otherwise, he used all his abilities in an intelligent manner and I could even switch him into different modes (focused on single target vs. AE damage). My companion levels up alongside me and also learns new abilities just as I do. Companion abilities can easily be set to be auto-used or disabled by the companion AI and I could even pop out my companion’s hotbar if I wanted to manually execute his abilities.

Outside of combat, companions perform the vast majority of crafting tasks in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Crafting in Star Wars: The Old Republic is called Crew Skills, mainly because these skills aren’t all necessarily what you would normally think of as crafting. True, there are a variety of gathering and crafting skills to pick up, but there are also mission skills, which most closely resemble Final Fantasy Tactics’ Errands system. The only thing my character could do involving Crew Skills was to actively gather resources from nodes out in the world, but even then I could shift+click the node to have my companion run to it and do it himself. Otherwise, Crew Skills are entirely time-based, where the player sends the companion out to perform a task or queued up series of tasks such as craft one or several items, or go out on a mission to find certain resources. I didn’t really craft much of anything during my play, but I really enjoyed Slicing as a Crew Skill. Slicing basically allowed me to hack a variety of objects in the world and retrieve sealed boxes that can be opened, each containing credits or even an item. The boxes come in various rarities as well. I’ve found anything from lumps of credits to rare item modifications. It’s a fun distraction that kind of made me feel like I was playing the lottery, especially if I sent my companion out on a Slicing mission. He’d come back with a box and I’d open it hoping for some good stuff.

Let’s Play Huttball!

I wasn’t able to take part in any sort of World PvP during my play, but I did get a chance to mess around with the game’s Warzones. Warzones are your typical instanced PvP content akin to World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds or Warhammer Online’s Scenarios, though Warzones in Star Wars: The Old Republic are considerably more story-focused. The cinematic approach to PvE content in the game is also clearly visible in the game’s PvP. Currently, you can’t begin queuing for a Warzone until you’re level 10, but this wasn’t a huge deal. BioWare has three Warzones planned for launch: the Alderaan Warzone (capture-and-hold), Huttball (think space football – with guns, lightsabers, and deathtraps!), and the Void Star (attack/defend). For the purposes of this preview, we’ll be looking at Huttball and the Alderaan Warzone.

Huttball was easily my least favorite of the available Warzones, not because it isn’t polished or anything like that, but because it is far more reliant on teamwork than Alderaan is. Teamwork is fine and dandy, this is an MMO after all, but Huttball just requires it in such a way I feel it may be prohibitive to playing in a solo queue, though I feel it has tons of potential to be fun in group queue. In Huttball, the goal is to basically grab the ball at the center and carry it into the enemy team’s endzone. Along the way the enemy team will of course be trying to stop you and there are many deathtraps such as acid pits and flame vents that can really mess you up. The ball itself can be passed to other teammates (and intercepted along the way, I believe) and that’s where the problem comes in. Hardly anyone passes the ball.  Either they don’t know they can pass or they simply stubbornly trudge on even when another teammate is in a better position (you know, without the entire enemy team on top of him). The match ends after about 10 to 15 minutes but it doesn’t matter how things are going, because you have to wait for the time to be up. If you’re losing terribly, you’re still stuck there for the entire duration of the match. I don’t need to hang around for 15 minutes to know that I lost when it’s 7-0.  Sometimes it just goes badly for any one reason or another and it would be awesome if the game mode took that into account.

Alderaan, on the other hand, has none of these issues. Alderaan is a straightforward capture-and-hold PvP map where both sides are vying for a turret placed in the center as well as turrets on the east and west sides of the map. Controlling turrets causes them to fire into the opposing team’s ship depleting its health. The more turrets you hold, the faster the enemy ship is taken down, and the ship visibly takes damage as it is it hit, eventually even catching fire and crashing into the ground at the end of the match.

PvP was just as visceral as it felt months ago when I sampled it in San Francisco, playing a dual-wielding melee Sith Marauder. Unlike the Marauder, as a Commando I was definitely looking to keep people at range. Early on, Commandos don’t have a terribly vast amount of crowd-control to apply, so it was sometimes a challenge keeping enemies off me, but if I got a chance to really lay into a clump of players, the fireworks were truly fun to watch.

It’s a Trap – I Mean Wrap!

Overall, I had a great time playing the Trooper and the game seems to have come quite a long way since my trip back in April. The biggest thing to worry about at this point isn’t whether or not Star Wars: The Old Republic will be fun, but what friggin’ class to go through with on your first go-around! I realize many of you out there (including myself) are possibly settled on what class they want to play – but honestly, if you try out the other classes, you will probably end up pretty conflicted.

While I’ve always looked forward to playing the Trooper, I actually found the experience to top my expectations. Not only am I left conflicted on what I want to play, I’m not even sure what Advanced Class I’d want to play if I did end up switching over to the Trooper.  I’ve been all about the Vanguard from the moment I heard about it, but man is that auto-cannon addictive. Give it a spin (pardon the pun) yourself if you get the chance and you may be surprised!

källa:mmorpg.com

EA utan spikad lansering

Star Wars: The Old Republic är hett efterlängtat av många men än så länge har EA inte gett oss något lanseringsdatum. I en rapport till sina investerare har EAs finanschef Eric Brown nu berättat att det möjligen kan komma ett datum under Oktober månad. Dock är EA försiktiga och då de satsar på att få en såpass smidig lansering som möjligt, vill de vara ordentligt förberedda.

Medan EA hoppas få ut spelet till julhandeln öppnar de upp möjligheten för att det kan dröja till 2012 innan vi får ta del av Biowares massiva onlinerollspel. Med lite tur får vi veta vad som händer inom den närmsta månaden

Precis som jag själv har misstänkt så kan det nog vara så attt vi tyvärr får njuta av detta tidigast nästa år, den som väntar på något gott....

En artikel som handlar om Tank-rollen i PVP, rätt informationsrik med saker man inte har tänkt på

http://torwars.com/2011/09/19/soaking-up-the-beatdown-tanking-in-swtor%e2%80%99s-pvp/


källa:torwars.com

Tillställningen som hålls varje år i Earls Court Exhibition center i London, räknas som ett av de största eventen inom branschen när det gäller England. I år visar bioware och Lucasarts upp the old republic på detta event och låter samtidigt spelarna få ta del av startplaneterna som var och en av de 8 klasserna har när man börjar spelet som någon av dessa klasser, även PVP kommer att vara tillgängligt att delta i och då är det Alderaan respektive Huttball som står till förfogande för spelarna.

Eurogamer expo håller på från den 22 september tillochmed den 25 september och de tider som gäller dessa dagar är från kl 11 AM till 7 PM.

Lördagen den 24 september från kl 20.00 till 24.00 kommer Bioware att anordna ett såkallat Community Meet and Greet i Trocadero Centre. Lyckas man ta sig dit så får man självklart träffa andra från the old republic kommunityn, ta några drinkar med Bioware och även ta del av frågestund med utvecklarna (Q&A session).