Taking Full Advantage of Bonus XP Leveling

Now that my main character is level 50 and fairly well geared, I'm spending some more time exploring other classes and their class stories. The problem is that I have already done all of the side quests three times now! So although I am enjoying the main class story lines, which are fresh and new for each class, I'm finding myself not wanting to repeat the hundreds of side missions yet again. 

To avoid them I'm playing avatars at the same time and taking full advantage of rested XP. As you can see in the screenshot here, I have three quarters of a bar available in rested XP. The green outline indicates how much double experience I will get. The double experience applies to all NPC kills but does not include the actual experience you get from the quests or from space. With three quarters of a bar of rested experience I will be getting double XP for all my kills for up to three levels. This is allowing me to skip a lot of the side quests on most of the planets for all my alt avatars.

To get rested experience, all you need to do is log out in a cantina or on your ship. Rested experience will cap out at a full bar. 

Other things I'm doing to avoid side missions are the daily space missions, which are quick and profitable, and also PvP. Spending all my warzone commendations on gear for for my alt characters and their companions makes up for the loot that I missed out on getting by choosing to not do side missions.

That's Not a Leprechaun Waiting for a Pot of Gold!

This is a common sight on the planet Ilum. You've just battled your way through enemy forces in hopes of obtaining some sort of epic reward. But when you reach the end of the dark tunnel you find a level 11 character using a 3rd party program to "AFK" loot the security chest that spawns about every 5 minutes.

Inside these chests, players can usually find reward items which scale in level or value to the planet's difficulty. Armor pieces, weapons, stims, or sometimes just a good amount of credits can be found inside these chests.

Many players have voiced their displeasure with what is happening here. On Keller's Void, an East Coast US server, there are even stories circulating about a character who made it all the way to level 50 just by entering warzone PvP matches and going AFK in the corner until the match was completed, gaining all the experience the players who participated in the battle would recieve. Obviously this person pictured here rode the back of another player, perhaps even of their own creation, simply to "camp" the security chest, robbing anyone who actually fights their way to it of any riches it may have inside.

What can BioWare do to prevent this from happening? It is quite obvious that a 3rd party program is being employed here as the chest is opened and looted the very second it spawns into the world. Didn't BioWare state that they would not tolerate the use of 3rd party programs in this manner shortly before the game's release? These items are ending up on the Galactic Marketplace, making these "credit farmers" a fortune.

Here are suggestions from some of the players I have spoken to :

- Spawn a "boss" NPC along with the security chest every 5 minutes which would very easily dispatch any character not of the appropriate level in the vicinity. This boss could also hold the "key" to the box itself making it impossible to open unless the key is obtained from the NPC.

- Put a level requirement on the security chest, making it impossible to open unless the character is 5 levels above or below the items actually inside the chest itself.

- Put a level requirement on the entire planet, making it impossible to set foot into the areas where these chests spawn until a good portion of the character's class quest is completed.

Please feel free to comment and give your suggestions as well. Nothing is more frustrating than finding someone who is obviously away from keyboard taking away your opportunity to gain items which may help you accomplish your goals in Star Wars the Old Republic.

Defeat Bonethrasher!

This is not your average Rancor!

Bonethrasher is the first boss you will encounter in the Karagga's Palace Operation. Once you enter the operation you will need to clear your way through the guards and into the front door where you are met with a bit of "Hutt Hospitality". Karagga the Hutt will quickly pull the trap door out from underneath you (just like when Luke Skywalker confronted Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi). You will fall onto a platform surrounded by a pit of poisonous liquid which will kill your character off instantly if you fall into it or are knocked back. A set of four creatures await you at the onset of the fight. With crowd control and focused fire, they are really not much of a challenge.

Once the creatures are defeated, Bonethrasher will make his way into the arena. He's big, mean, and hungry! During the fight, unfortunate Gamorean Guards will be thrown into the pit to keep Bonethrasher "well fed", giving him an increased damage buff. Also unique to this boss is an ability that will not allow him to be taunted. His aggro will spread randomly to different members of the group and you will need to stay close to the center of the platform or he will simply swing at you, knocking you into the poison around the stage.

Your best bet is to keep behind him as best as you can. When he turns to face someone, you will then know where his interest has turned to. During the fight he will actually pound you into the floor, pretty much planting you in place and you will actually need to crawl out to keep battling.

This is a pretty entertaining fight but you will need quite a bit of DPS to take him down. The inability to taunt him makes it quite challenging, and having to constantly stay on the move really makes it hard to lay down alot of damage.

He has a 7 minute enrage timer so you will need to defeat him before then or become his next meal.

Security Key Vendor FTW!

Account security is a big concern on BioWare's part. I do not know how many times I have heard someone say "my WoW account got hacked."

By adding an extra layer of account security via security key, BioWare has insured themselves of alot less problems and having to retrieve accounts for players. Players also can rest assured knowing it will be that much harder to have their accounts hacked into.

The Security Key Generator itself is a small keychain sized device which generates a 7 digit security code required when logging into the SWTOR launcher. It is powered by a simple watch size battery which can be easily replaced by opening the actual key generator. There is also a smart phone application that can be used.

As incentive to use this extra layer of protection, BioWare has added in-game Security Key Vendors that can only be accessed if you have logged onto your account using a security key.

There is a unique Dancer's Uniform which can be modded, a collection of extra Companion Customizations, a Rythym Augmentation Droid, which will play music for you for 20 seconds after being summoned, and my personal favorite, Fleet Passes.

Fleet Passes can be purchased from the Security Key Vendor for 1,000 credits each and they stack in your inventory. They are bound to your character so they are exclusive to those using a security key to log in. They have only a one hour cooldown as opposed to the Emergency Fleet Pass ability which takes 16 hours. These make it much easier and quicker to get back to your respective faction's hub for quick access to flashpoints, storage, vendors, the Galactic Market, or even just a rest area to log out.

In my opinion, the Fleet Passes alone make it very worthwhile to use the security key option when logging into your account. I do also enjoy the Rythym Augmentation droid despite it's 55,000 credit price.

By adding these incentives to use the security key option, BioWare has probably saved themselves alot of headaches and have added a few very convenient items for players who will have exclusive rights to the Security Key Vendors. They can be found on your faction's Fleet Hub, and some of the orbital stations like the one found on Ilum.

Imperial / Republic Fleet Quickly Becoming Everyone's Hang Out.

It did not take long for players to start to congregate on Fleet for both factions. It is the place to be for Galactic Market buying and selling, along with a wide assortment of vendors, quest givers, Flashpoints, and trainers. Fleet has been a very lively place. So much in fact that you may need to turn off the option to display other player's nameplates to increase performance. The cantina band generates music which echoes throughout the hallways, giving an almost stadium like feel to the entire place. My guildies danced away on top of one of the bar counters as they waited for group members to ready for the next Flashpoint.

Was Ilum and SWTOR's Endgame PvP Content Rushed?

Since launch, the planet Ilum has caused much concern for BioWare and the players of Star Wars the Old Republic. From overall performance issues, loopholes in the daily PvP quests, to "bots" farming high end loot chests while away from keyboard, Ilum has raised alot of issues with the player base.

With yesterday's 1.1 patch, players are no longer able to "trade off" with the other faction in order to complete their PvP daily quests. They now HAVE to PvP to complete the PvP daily.

As a result, players from the Sith Empire have now found another loophole. It became apparent that they were farming Valor (PvP Rank) by simply completing quests while inside the actual Republic Base. Some players made it all the way to rank 60 in just one day by taking advantage of a mechanic that was not intended to exist. Sith players going inside of the Republic Base were to be killed almost instantly, but this was not the case, and the damage has been done. In turn, there was nothing similar for the Republic players to take advantage of.

Many Republic players are claiming that the gap has already been breached, and many of the Imperial players have literally cheated their way to the top by taking advantage of this exploit. They are now able to use alot of the top end gear, leaving the Republic players months behind.
Players have threatened to cancel their accounts, and some are demanding a roll-back to make the stage even once again.

Today, in response, BioWare is implementing an emergency patch which will eliminate Imperial players from being able to go inside of the Republic Base without immediate death. Whether they take action or not on those players who took advantage of this exploit remains to be seen. It is uncertain at this time if they will roll back Valor ranks on these players as well.

Has the damage been done? Will the players involved see their Valor ranks rolled back? Is it fair to leave it as is?

With any MMO it will always be a work in progress. Some are calling yesterday's 1.1 patch the worst patch in MMO history. While myself being a former Star Wars Galaxies player, I can definitely beg to differ. However, there are many players who are dedicated to PvP and are quite upset over what took place yesterday. Hopefully BioWare will take some sort of action to even out the scales and make the players happy.

With this being said, do you feel SWTOR's end game PvP content or even the planet Ilum as a whole were rushed to live? Would more beta time have revealed some of these problems before the player base got involved? Should the PvP on Ilum have been instanced like the warzones?

More to come as we see what BioWare has in store with the emergency patch going in right now at the time of this post.

New Content and Guild Banks to Come

Bioware today launched this new video which covers some up and coming features in SWTOR. This includes new warzones, interface changes and guild banks. Probably the coolest thing with the up and coming changes is that they are designed by the team that designed the original game which is different to many other games where one team designed the original and then separate teams designed add-ons.  I have experienced it many times when the feel of the original game gets lost in an expansion because of creative differences between design teams. Knowing that the up and coming editions have been in development for over a year is also exciting. With a guild of close to 100 members, I am really looking forward to the guild bank features.

Patch 1.1 Killed PvP

This was the view for most Republic players in Ilum today after 1.1 went live. These changes to the open world zone let players camp spawn zones and show the unbalance in faction population in its full glory.

The changes in 1.1 to Ilum are:
Ilum
The daily and weekly mission objectives in Ilum now require defeating enemy players and/or collecting armaments from the center objective.
Players now gain increased Valor from player kills in Ilum.
Players now gain increased bonus Valor for kills based on the number of objectives controlled by their faction.
Increased bonus Valor is now granted for player kills when defending an objective your faction owns.
A notification is now displayed when a player gains Valor.
Three new respawn points have been added for each faction.
Companions are now restricted from the PvP objective area on Ilum.
Notifications are now displayed when enemy players are close to an objective.

Adding the multiple spawn points proved absolutely pointless if the game announces where the players are. Even if you manage to get into the zone as a Republic payer and find an equal fight of one or two Imperials, before you have a chance to actually kill them you have several players ganking you. In most PvP scenarios it relies on players to communicate when they need assistance. The announcements are the first thing that need to be taken out of this zone. Due tot he massive faction imbalance, some sort of population cap for PvP zones may need to be implemented, in fact, maybe the whole battle zone needs to be scrapped and re-thought out. They might want to take some inspiration from the way that Blizzard designed Tol Barad which has scheduled PvP events and limited amounts of players that could be involved, ensuring a balanced and fun time for all. Bioware have already taken actions and disabled shuttle points in Ilum, pending a fix.

Kotaku have a video on what it is like to PvP in Ilum as a republic player. Thanks to Klintz for the link.

More Players Logging in to SWTOR than WoW in the US and EU

This is some interesting stuff I found around the net. What the numbers show us is that about 100,000 more people may have logged in to SWTOR over the last week or two than World of Warcraft.

Year on year stats from http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php  show that World of Warcraft has a total of 266, 435 players per week on average, logged on during peak hours in the US and EU regions combined. ( Note: this is just peak numbers)


According to http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01...current-users/ SWTOR has 350, 000 peak concurrent users and BioWare have confirmed that there are now over 1 million accounts.

Now just keep in mind SWTOR is new, so people who might have played WoW are checking out SWTOR. The question is, will they stick around? Of the 80+ players in  my guild I know of 1 player who did not like SWTOR and has gone back to another game. He first played a Jedi Knight and told us all it was too hard, then he played a Trooper and told us all it was too easy ... the truth was it was just not the game for him.

SWTOR will get a lot more players than the first 1 million and some people who play SWTOR will find it's just not what they wanted. I think it will be moths until we see what SWTOR can do. I feel it's way too early to call SWTOR a WoW killer yet, and besides I think it would be inaccurate to call any game can be a WoW killer; WoW has already surpassed what it needed to do to be successful. 

January 17th Patch 1.1: Postponed

Nooooooo Noooooo Patch tonight!

From AmberGreen:

Hello everyone! Because we care about ensuring that Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ provides you with a consistent and quality game play experience, we will be postponing weekly maintenance this week. Downtime was originally scheduled for Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 from 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to 10AM CST (8AM PST/11AM EST/4PM GMT/5PM CET) and will now occur at a later date due to issues requiring additional testing that have been discovered with the Game Update 1.1 content on the Public Test Server. 


These issues were primarily brought to our attention by the diligent players on the Public Test Server Forums. Your participation in testing helps to improve the game as a whole, and we appreciate your discussion and feedback. The bug reports you provide are a valuable part of the development process. Thank you!


We’re working hard to bring you Game Update 1.1: Rise of the Rakghouls and are working hard to ensure your overall experience with Star Wars: The Old Republic is spectacular! The maintenance window for Game Update 1.1 will be rescheduled for some time within the next few days, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. When there’s a definite time, we will post here on the forums as well as on the Community Blog. Please keep your eye out for updates, and we will provide information as soon as it’s available.