State of the Game with Jeff Hickman

Hello everyone,

This is the first of many regular “State-of-the-Game” postings to you, the players. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and finally have the opportunity to get it started. I’m hoping to use these postings as a direct way to address some of the top unresolved issues that most concern our community. I won’t get to everything all at once, but I’ll try to hit some of the big ones, and talk about these topics as openly as I can. It’s my hope that you’ll respond with more comments, questions and concerns. As you do, I will then take these and either roll them into my next update, or have the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ community team answer them directly as we usually do. Sound good? OK!

Before we begin, let me introduce myself for those of you who do not know me. My name is Jeff Hickman and I am the Executive Producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have been working on the team for about 2 years now and was responsible for most of the Live Services and ultimately the launching of our award-winning game. Twelve years ago, I joined the industry as the Director of CS for Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) with Mythic Entertainment. In the years since then, I have engaged in just about every role you can imagine on an MMO team (except art, because I suck at art). In the early days at Mythic, I helped design several expansions for DAoC, produced and ran their daily operations and in 2005 was given the opportunity to become Executive Producer for that beloved game. Between then and now, I built, launched and operated Warhammer Online and I was also Executive Producer for Ultima Online. I’ve devoted my life to MMOs and the people that play them, and have some cool tattoos to prove it:

When we decided to go Free-to-Play earlier this year, we had weeks of discussion with everyone on the team about where we thought the game was going, what we thought was going right and what was going wrong. We uncovered a lot of issues, but three things really stood out:

1. Our game is awesome. People love it and want to play it.

2. The subscription requirement was driving away huge numbers of people who do not want to commit to paying monthly.

3. The frequency of our Game Updates was way too slow. People were leaving because we were not releasing new content fast enough to keep up with the pace at which it was being consumed.

You are now seeing the results of these conversations. Free-to-Play goes live this Fall, and we are dedicated to getting Game Updates out to you every 6 weeks or so. Though each of these efforts is incredibly challenging for the team, they have accepted that challenge and have tackled them head on!

But we know there is more we can do, more you want us to do. So today, I thought it might be more useful to dive into some more granular and “hot” topics.

Topic #1: Staff: Why are some developers leaving The Old Republic™? How will the game be affected?

Answer: People leave for a lot of reasons. Some have worked on the project for 6+ years and are simply tired and want to go work on something else. Others may not agree with the direction that the game is heading – Free-to-Play is not for everyone and requires a big shift in thinking and culture within the studio. Still others do not have the right skills for the roles that we have as the studio evolves and changes. When any single person leaves, whether we make the decision or they do, it is difficult, but the studio and game live on and thrive as we change, actually thrive because we change. The core of what makes the game and studio great are still here; quality in our game and in our workplace, people that are passionate about both, a camaraderie with each other that helps us support one another, and key people like James Ohlen (who was at BioWare from the very start) who continue to help us carry the banner of BioWare and who are dedicated to help evolve and improve Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Topic #2: Bugs: How does testing work? Why do bugs get through? Why did Game Update 1.4 have so many of them? What are we doing to improve the process?

Answer: MMOs are undoubtedly one of the most complex games on Earth. We employ hundreds of QA professionals to ensure that our game is high quality, but sometimes bugs get through. We test every step of the way as we develop the game or change to the game. We have many, many development environments that work in a sequence to push updates from initial construction, to code and content integration, to internal end-to-end testing, to player facing testing on Public Test Servers and then on to the Live servers. Sometimes (like in Game Update 1.4) we make changes that have unintended (and undiscovered) consequences on completely different parts of the game (the performance issues that showed up in the update are a great example of this). These unintended changes happen more often than you would think (or we would like), though we usually catch them before they go live. We have recently put new measures in place both on the development teams and in QA, as well on Public Test Server (where we should find many of these types of issues), to catch things like this in the future. I am not saying it will not happen again – bugs will always happen – but we will strive to give you the best, high quality, bug-free experience that we can. As a side note, we finally got a lock on the last of the major issues from Game Update 1.4 and appreciate your patience with that one.

Topic #3: Oceanic populations. Are we doing anything about them?

Answer: We are very aware of the concerns with the population levels on the Oceanic servers. The problem is pretty complex, as the solutions we have either split the populations further (like allowing Oceanic players to move to North American servers), or would force players to go to server types (PvP or RP, etc…) that they do not want to be on. Our current plan is to wait for Free-to-Play to launch and see what the influx of new players does to the populations of these servers. We will give it a little time and if we do not see significant improvement, then we will move ahead with the solution that offers the best playing experience for the Oceanic community.

OK, that is it for now. Please keep your comments and questions coming and I will try to answer the biggest, unresolved questions in these “State-of-the-Game” posts. I want to thank you all for the opportunity to be involved with such an amazing game like Star Wars: The Old Republic. I will do everything in my power to take care of the game, and help guide it to a great future.


Jeff Hickman
Executive Producer
Original

I don't know that this tells us a lot of stuff we didn't know but it is all in the one place now right?

Video Guide to Voiced Emotes on the PTS

I have put together this video guide showing off all the voiced slash commands (like /cheer, /chuckle, etc) that are on the public test server and coming to live in patch 1.5.
It's not complete yet - at this stage there are a lot of the voiced commands that have filler sound files. A note that pops up telling you what the sound is and a note that "actor to improvise". So before all of these slash commands are put on the live server there will be more new sound files to come!

the /commands are:

/apologize

/Bye

/cheer

/chuckle

/congrats

/Farewell

/followme

/giggle

/Goodbye

/goodjob

/Hello

/Hi

 /Introduce

/kiss

/laugh

/no

/nod

/sorry

/thanks

/woot

/yes

Enjoy the video ...

New PvP content "before year's end"

From Allison Berryman

Hi everyone! I asked Damion Schubert for any news or information we can share. There are many questions about the topic, but he did have a bit to say about new Warzone content:

Fear not! New Warzone content is in heavy testing and should be in the next major patch after 1.5. We hesitate to give exact timing, but definitely before the year's end.

So in the next 2 months we will see new PvP content but what will it be? New gear? 1 new warzone or more?

Is it taking too long for PvP content?

George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy discuss the future of Star Wars movies.

The Walt Disney Company announced that it is acquiring Lucasfilm -- the global entertainment company founded by George Lucas and the home of the legendary "Star Wars" franchise. Watch Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company Bob Iger and George Lucas, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lucasfilm, discuss the announcement. 

Lucasfilm has agreed to be acquired by Disney, a joining of forces that offers tremendous opportunities for the future of Star Wars. As the leading global family entertainment company, Disney is the perfect partner for everything Star Wars. The original six films of the Saga saw Anakin go from a young boy to a Jedi Knight to a Sith Lord and ultimately through to his redemption, but there are still many more stories to be told. With this announcement, George Lucas passes the torch to a new generation of filmmakers to make Star Wars films that will faithfully carry on the legacy.

A Closer Look at the Crime Lord's Cartel and Black Market Packs

Players on the test Server received 2400 Cartel Coins today to test new goodies and I decided to use the coins to compare loot in the two different Cartel Packs (the Crime Lord's Cartel and the Black Market). 

I'm still really impressed with the randomness of the loot in these packs. Out of the nine packs I opened today, I received only one duplicate item and if I include the four other packs I purchased yesterday, I have received a total of 3 duplicate items over 13 packs-1 mount and 2 transparent chess pieces. 

But which of the two packs is better value for money and which has the better loot? Let's break down ...

Crime Lord's Cartel Pack

The Crime Lord's Cartel packs cost 360 Cartel Coins. You get two special items and three non-special items (like XP boosts, hand crafting mats, etc.) The Crime Lord's pack also has the chance of a super-rare item. Out of the four packs I opened I got two chest pieces (one in an upper body kit containing a chest piece and gloves), one mount, one pet, one relic, one crystal, one emote and one banner. Details are in the screenshot compilation below.

Black Market Pack

Out of the five Black Market Packs I bought I got two chest pieces, one pet, a lightsaber, and a banner. Details are in the compiled screenshot below.

So which type of  pack is best?

So although the Black Market Packs are exactly half the cost, making them seem like great value for the total items you get, the chance for rare items is reduced. I have not seen any mounts drop from the Black Market Packs yet, whilst I've already got a total of four mounts out of the seven Crime Lord's Cartel Packs I have opened over the last couple of days. Having said that, I did get some cool stuff from the The Black Market packs like the Tythonian Force Master lightsaber and the Bastilia's Sash relic. If you can afford it, the Crime Lord's Cartel packs are better, but if I only had the coins for a Black Market Pack I wouldn't not buy one, especially when you're just starting to buy them. Down the track, once you've collected most of the cool items you will find it hard to get what you want from a Black Market pack, especially mounts, crystals or seemingly hard to get drops.

Some cool stuff from packs

To give you an idea of what some of the cooler items are, here are some screenshots. The Menace Emote pictured above makes you glow red while you hold your hand out and gesture for someone to come closer to you.

You can't be taken as a serious crime Lord without a monkey-lizard. Just make sure he stays clear of R2 units as they like to shock them.

The Tythonian Force-Master's lightsaber adds a cool glow effect to the bottom of your lightsaber blade as you can see in the above screenshot. This smokey-glow effect works with any color crystal, including the pink/purple pictured here. Is it just me, or is my character getting ready for a madi-gras? Shirt off: check. Pink glow-stick: check.

The two new relics can be seen in action here. Although the Tulak Hord Force apparition seems to just stand there and not attack, the Bastila's Sash apparition heals you with no problems at all and as you can see, both are able to proc at the same time. 

200k Credit Cap For Freepers! Will it Force the Price of Items?

Free to play players (Freepers) will have a credit cap of 200k. Any extra credits made go into an Escrow account that you can see in your inventory. Once the credits have gone into that Escrow account the only way to get them back is to subscribe! If you earn 300K, for example, you can spend 200 of it but 100 of it will be stuck in escrow forever and the only way to retrieve it is to subscribe. It doesn't matter if you spend 200 of your 300, the 100 that was over the cap doesn't then become available; it stays in escrow. Free to play players are going to have to be careful when they are approaching the 200k cap. 

What will this mean for the Galactic Trade Market?  

Free to play players, using Cartel Coins to purchase Black Market Packs for example, are not going to want to sell items for over 200k. Subscribers will have a bigger audience for things like mats, if their prices are under 200k. Will we see an influx of items priced between 150-199k? Will we also see epic items that freepers can't equip priced really cheap to avoid the freepers hitting their  credit cap? I was actually quite surprised to see such a low credit cap for freepers.

Do you think 200k is a high enough cap? I'd personally like to see it closer to the 500k mark. Keep in mind that freepers can move credits to other characters if they have unlocked their mail box.

Cartel Market Tour

Patch 1.5 introduces Free to Play for Star Wars The Old Republic and a big part of the Free to Play system is the Cartel Market. When you first log into the game after patch 1.5 hits the servers, you will get this welcome message:

Although the game will be Free to Play there will be lots of features and benefits that only the paid subscribers will get and these will be flaunted to the Free to Play players, enticing them to join the fold. The features include unlimited access to warzones, operations and flashpoints, as well as unlimited access to end game purple gear.

Free to Play players will use the Cartel Market to pay for weekly passes to things like flashpoints or operations. Subscriber players earn 500 Cartel Coins per month, just for being a subscriber and they can then use these credits in the Cartel Market to purchase all sorts of neat upgrades and trinkets. 

Bioware use the 'Featured' and 'Newly Added' tabs in the Cartel Market to make players aware of the latest and greatest items available.

Most players on the test server seem to be purchasing the Packs. You can purchase either a Crime Lords Cartel Pack or a Black Market Cartel Pack. In the two screenshots below I have joined two screenshots together in each in order to show you the full list of what is in each Pack.

The Black Market Pack is the cheaper of the two. The prices are listed near the bottom right.

After you purchase your Cartel Items you need to Claim them so that they will then appear in your inventory. You can purchase things in the Cartel Market using on character and then logout and log back in with a different character, and claim the items with that different character. Your Cartel Coin value is shared across all your characters on your account. You can only claim your Cartel Market purchases for one character although you can change what character is using them. On the test server they are bound to a character for five days and then they can be changed to another character. Bioware have already stated that this binding is prevent the use of the Cartel Market for quick credit transfers, but the five day time frame on the test server is not set in stone yet.

When you open your Crime Lord Pack an animation appears ingame to assure that all the players around you see you have new goodies! I was able to purchase three Crime Lord Packs and this is what I got from them:

The first pack gave me a Probe Droid pet and a metallic purple mount, along with a minor social boost and some crafting mats.

The second pack provided two new mounts, both different, a space mission experience boost and some crafting mats.

The mounts are all multi-speed mounts, meaning that you can use them with speeder piloting rank 1, through to rank 3, and the mount scales with your skill level.

The third pack I opened gave me an Imperial banner and an orange torso item. This orange torso item is an invisible top that acts the same way as any other armor/chest piece does, but allows the player to be bare-chested if they are male. When equipped on a female character, the default bra is still visible.

The Black Market Pack provided me with one less purple item and one less crafting mat, compared with the Crime Lord Cartel Pack.

I received a relic item in the Black Market Pack that is a level 50 equipped healing trinket. In the screenshot below you can see the trinket in action.

The Force Apparition appears to heal you. This happened in the first 10 seconds of combat whenever the 2 minute cooldown was up. So although the stats look cool on this relic, I am really not too sure how useful it will be.

If you're not into the random-rolled packs, the COSMETIC tab has a variety of mounts and pets available.

The UNLOCKS tab is where most Free to Play players will get the things they need to experience more parts of the game. If you see an exclamation mark next to Buy Now, it means that your account already has that item unlocked, and you shouldn't waste your Cartel Coins on it. UNLOCKS like Section X and bank Tabs are provided with subscriptions. The UNLOCKS tab also provides the ability to unlock specific species without having to level to level 50 first. Certain UNLOCKS are applied account-wide (across all your characters).

There are five tabs of armor and weapons. At this stage there is only one melee weapon - a Gammorean guard axe. There's also only one variation of a color crystal listed - orange/yellow. There are a full range of armor looks available for your character and this includes unique Sith looks for Republic players and unique Republic looks for Sith players. All the armor, from what I can tell, is simply recolored items for equipment that is already in the game - nothing brand new. The armor levels range from level 15 to level 43. So there is no end game armor there, it's all strictly cosmetic and not game-breaking. All the armor is adaptive, allowing any player to equip any look they choose, so long as they meet the minimum level requirement.

In CONSUMABLES you'll find a variety of XP boosts, valor boosts, and other consumable items which will speed up levelling. These items are valuable for both Free to Play players and subscribers.

I'm not too sure if I like so many items being strictly random access via the Cartel Packs. I guess we're all going to end up with 5 or 6 mounts we never use, or we'll be able to sell the items on the Galactic Trade Market for inagme credits. I didn't experience any duplicate items in all the packs I bought, but I'm sure that it will happen for some unlucky players unless Bioware have the randomness well planned.

Some items, especially the XP boosts, are a bit expensive for subscribers who already pay a monthly fee. For a full paying subscriber I would expect to be able to get the necessary XP boosts automatically without having to spend extra money. The Cartel Market has potential, I just hope that Bioware don't get greedy to the extent where subscriber players are needing to buy boosts on top of their monthly subscription, just to fully enjoy the game.

Character Preview Update in Patch 1.5

Along with the launch of the Cartel Market, coming out in Patch 1.5, Bioware have introduced some new features to the character preview screen. The first change is the ability to turn your weapon on and off. Using the center button highlighted in the image below will enable your character preview interface to equip or unequip a weapon. (Note: There seems to be a brightness issue with the preview screens that are on the test server at the moment. I'm sure this will be fixed before Patch 1.5 is released.)

Using your mouse wheel while your preview screen is open will zoom in and out on your character, giving you a high res look at all your equipment.

If you're fussy like me, the look of your lightsaber hilt is important, and so this new feature will be a pleasant distraction of your first visit to SWTOR once the patch comes out (in the next couple of weeks).

Apat from being able to preview weapons that you're not able to use normally, you can also preview color crystal effects on lightsabers even when you don't own them. Hit Control and then right click on a crystal to preview how it looks in your hot little hand. Note: You will have to have a lightsaber equipped, or be previewing a lightsaber hilt to experiment with crystal colors.

You can also preview your companion's customizations and weapon options, up close and personal with a rotate feature, which is a massive upgrade to the current preview screen.

I adjusted the brightness in this screenshot to show you the detail you can see when you zoom in.

Free-to-Play Insider Preview Video

Today BioWare are excited to release our first episode of the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Free-to-Play Insider Preview. This new video series is your window into the latest news and information on the new Free-to-Play option coming to The Old Republic™ this Fall. The first video provides insight into the features offered to Free-to-Play players and Subscribers. Take a first look at the new Cartel Market as well as get answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about the Free-to-Play option.

Tor Assistant DPS Meter 1.0 Released

I for one love this tool it will help you optimise your gameplay in raids and PvP you will need to turn on combat logging  to file to get it to work  Preferences/Combat Logging.

Tor Assistant helps you perform at your best in SWTOR by giving you a wide range of tools at your disposal.

• Feature List 
• Raid DPS/HPS Meter
• Combat Timer
• Enrage Timer
• Eternity Vault Pylon Solver
• Individual Damage/Healing Info

Download now!

To give you an idea or what it looks like in game this is it on my PC transparency set to 80% on the DPS window. ( I am running 2 LEDs at 1920x1080and SWTOR is in window mode)

As requested my desktop :) I got it from here