Making of Rise of the Hutt Cartel Part 1: Creating Makeb video and screenshots

In this video, Hall Hood, Lead Writer, and Ryan Dening, Lead Concept Artist, join forces to give more insight into the exciting new planet, Makeb, coming with the Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

Watch as they discuss unique areas never-before-seen in The Old Republic™ universe, including the exotic settlement on Makeb and the vast plateaus that await you on the planet's volatile surface. Find out how Makeb continues your character's storyline with a galactic struggle for the planet's dwindling resources. Plus, get a sneak peak at the beautifully rendered Taloas City and other new graphic enhancements that will compliment your gameplay experience!

The Many Looks of Jaesa Willsaam Light & Dark

Companion customizations: Jaesa Willsaam Light & Dark

Jaesa is a unique companion as she has a split personality. Depending on your decisions prior to unlocking her, her persona will be either Light based (as in a Jedi Consular) or Dark (as in a Sith Assassin). The difference between the two personas effect her looks, personality, skill set, missions and the story line.

Light Jaesa is the type of girl you'd be proud to take home to your Mom for dinner. Dark Jaesa is the type of girl to take home if you wanted to really upset your parents. These are the two default looks (Light on the left and Dark on the right). It's mainly her makeup and eye color that is different with the default looks. When it comes to customizations though, there are four extra looks for each and they involve different skin colors, hairstyles and makeup.

It's not only her looks that change but it's her complete story. The conversations that you have with the Light Jaesa are completely different to the ones you have with a Dark Jaesa. Her gift preferences are different and the way in which she responds to conversations is also different. Light Jaesa likes compassionate Light side decisions. Dark Jaesa is evil to the core and will not approve of you being soft in any way. To fully experience the Sith Warrior story line you'll need to play it through as both Light and Dark. Even different missions are unlocked. The only way to experience them both is to play Sith Warrior as Light side and then play it again as a Dark warrior. I personally felt that the Light side story line was more intriguing.

.









First let's have a look at the five Dark side options, each one of them bad-ass in their own way. She's definitely a bad girl and her looks show it. In combat she will taunt your enemies and exclaim how she loves pain.

As you can see in the close-up images below, she's a passionate person and her passions control her connection to the Force. Be careful not to cheat on her, or she'll hunt down your mate and slice them up into little pieces.

These are the looks for the Light side Jaesa. She's clean cut, her hair is pulled back for practicality and there's very little make-up. She's the girl next door. She's sweet, compassionate and loving in everything she does. She'll help you convert the Dark Lord's of the Sith from within using her unique power to uncover other compassionate Sith to join your cause.

Customizations 1 (Light) and 5 (Dark) are available from the security key vendor on Illum orbital station. To access this vendor you will need a security key attached to your account. You cannot purchase customizations for a companion you don't have. If your Jaesa is Light then you can't purchase a Dark look. Customizations 1 and 5 are 12,500 credits each.

You can purchase customizations 2, 3 and 4 (Dark) and 1, 2 and 3 (Light) from the customization vendor Keth on Taris. Each one costs 12500 credits.

At first I thought it was going to be a bit of a chore having to level a second Sith Warrior to get this information and screenshots. I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity in the story lines that was revealed simply by making Light or Dark decisions. The Sith Warrior story line is definitely one of the most engaging and I'd highly recommend playing through it in both forms, Dark and Light, if you're passionate about experiencing the full extent of the SWTOR story.


D

SWTOR Public Test Server Character Copy Fix!!

Someone on reddit discovered this. I tried it and it worked for me.

1) Take off all your companion gears. All of them, every single companion, including customizations. Put them in cargo bay or sell them.

2) Log off to character select

3) Log on to your account and do the transfer

http://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/commen...r_copy_to_pts/

Off to do some testing!!!

Gree reputation requirement guide

Gree gear is highly sort after, so I thought I'd put all of the information I've found into one post so that you can figure out how many missions you need to do to get the gear you want.

Two of the armor sets, the black with red highlights and black with blue highlights, only require friend reputation, a total of 7500 to unlock Friend.

Here are all of the different ranks and the required amount of reputation to unlock each one:
Outsider = 2500
Newcomer = 5000
Friend = 7500
Hero = 10000
Champion = 15000
Legend = 30000

So to work out how much reputation you need to get to Champion, add Outsider, Newcomer, Friend and Hero together.

The weekly reputation cap is 12000 but you can squeeze in a little bit more. So if you use 44 green tokens (11880) and one purple (1440) you end up with 13320. You can min./max/ these amounts by taking off two green, throwing in a blue and then a purple to get the most out of it. Needless to say, if you have at least one purple token you can get at least 13000 reputation in a week just by using the purple token just before you hit the cap of 12000.

Green (g): 270 rep
Blue (b): 630 rep
Purple (p): 1440 rep

The amount of reputation available per day per character by only doing PvE quests, before Newcomer rank, is 1440. The amount of reputation available  per day per character  by only doing PvE quests, after Newcomer rank, is 2070. 

To unlock extra missions you will need to purchase the token off the main Gree vendor who has the weapons for 1000 credits. This token must be purchased for every character.

Thanks to a post i found in the forums, here's a breakdown of daily PvE mission rewards:
Day 1: 270 (one-time rep for introduction quest) + 1440 rep from PvE dailies = 1710 total rep.
Day 2: +1440 = 3150 total rep
Day 3: +1440 = 4590 total rep
Day 4: +1440 = 6030 total rep
Day 5: +1440 = 7470 total rep
Day 6: +1440 + 1440 from one-time newcomer quest + 630 from new daily = 10980 total rep
Day 7: +2070 rep = 13050 total rep (1050 over cap)

It has been confirmed by Bioware that the Gree vendors will remain after the event. Since you have to manually activate the tokens this means, you can't have too many tokens and it is very possible to reach Champion in the two weeks that we have in the event.

Another thing that some players haven't realized is that every time you kill the Boss in the center of PvP area, next to where you drop off the orbs, he drops a green token. I have personally picked up 10+ tokens off him over the last week. This in itself is one of the main reasons that my guild has spent so much time PvPing in the zone. Killing this droid every couple of minutes was a lot easier and more fun than doing all the missions on four different characters. World Bosses in the zone drop mutiple tokens too. Only players in the first few groups of an operation group actually get to loot the token. It is quite easy to kill these world Bosses with 8 or 16 players. With all the extra tokens acquired by world Bosses, area elites and the operation to kill Xendanalyst II drops mutiple tokens on both story and hard modes.

Hope this helps you get the gear you want. a big thanks to the reddit community for help on this.

The Many Looks of Blizz

Blizz customizations

I am now working my way through the story line of my seventh character on SWTOR, a Bounty Hunter. Although I played a Bounter Hunter character on a different server last year, to around level 30, I decided I'd start again and play it this time as tank. To say that Bounty Hunter's have a colorful array of companions is an understatement. Not only do they have the cutest female companion in the game, Mako (check out all her looks here), they also get what I consider to be the coolest companion in the game, Blizz.

Blizz is a Jawa and his personality is brilliant. He's very accepting and helpful and just an all around likable guy. He's not the best companion for a tank but I find myself taking him out and putting DPS gear on him anyway, simply because his comments, his look, and the way he sounds, are such a blast. What's not to like about a Jawa who can not only fix things but tank elites with ease?

Like Bowdaar, the wookie companion that Smugglers get, you can't change the appearance of Blizz's clothing through armor. The clothing look can only be changed through customizations. So changing Blizz's customizations is just like changing his clothes. Blizz is one of the few companions where having a variety of customizations makes sense if you use him a lot (for other companions, the customizations are more of a way to change their look for the long term whereas with Blizz's customizations it's just a wardrobe maneuver).

Above and beyond the default look, Blizz has four customizations. The default look (top center) has him in a bandoleer with a fury lining on the edge of his hood, matching shoulder pads and patches on his hood and cloak. Customization 1 (top left) changes him to a plain Jawa with no bandoleer or extra frills at all. Customization 2 (top right) simply adds a bandoleer to the plain Jawa look. Customization 3 (bottom left) adds dual bandoleers, crossed over his chest, and a shoulder pad on the plain Jawa cloak. Customization 4 is not in the game at the moment. Customization 5 (bottom right) is the most exciting. He has a custom cloak with all sorts of gadgets, a vest, shoulder pads and a backpack full of gizmos. It's the customization I've chosen to stick with.

The first three customizations are available from R-N05 on Belsavis. You will find this vendor as soon as you get off the shuttle to Belsavis. He sells customizations 1, 2 and 3 for 20 000 each.

Customization 5 is available from the security key vendor on Illum orbital station. To access this vendor you will need a security key attached to your account. Customization 5 is also 20 000 credits.

Relics of the Gree Event Sneak Peek Video Pink sabers and all...

I don't know call me old school but do we need odd color sabers? White, pink, red/black? people in SWTOR don't want to use the classic blues and greens for Jedi and just red for Sith. How cool was the original SWTOR  video with all the Sith red sabers?  Are we losing somthing in game when we have Jedi using Red sabers and Sith using Pink? Would we take Vader the same way if he pulled out a pink saber? I say let people keep the odd colour sabers but give a force bonus to the classic colors. What do you all think?
  

Between February 12 and February 26, visit the in-game News Terminal, located on Carrick Station or Vaiken Spacedock, to begin your adventure in an all new in-game event, Relics of the Gree!

 Uncover the real mission of the Gray Secant, an enormous ancient Gree starship that has mysteriously appeared over Ilum's Western Ice Shelf. The Gree have promised advanced technology, including highly-advanced weapons and armor, to anyone who is brave enough to aid them by taking on an action-packed mission.

Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree Live 12th Feb 2013

Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for five and a half hours on Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 from 3:30AM CST (1:30AM PST/4:30AM EST/9:30AM GMT/10:30AM CET/8:30PM AEDT) until 9AM CST (7AM PST/10AM EST/3PM GMT/3PM CET/2AM AEDT). All game servers, SWTOR.com, and the launcher will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than five and a half hours, but could be extended.

Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree unveils a new in-game event, Relics of the Gree. Travel to Ilum to investigate the appearance of an ancient Gree starships, called “the Gray Secant.” The Reputation System is also introduced in this game update, which allows you to earn Reputation points by completing missions for organizations such as the Gree or the Voss, or for military divisions within the Republic and the Empire for great rewards.

After this maintenance is over, restart the game launcher to patch to Game Update 1.7: Return of the Gree.

Events are available to Free-to-Play Players and Subscribers at no additional cost. Visit the Free-to-Play Features Chart for more information.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

Time: 3:30AM CST (1:30AM PST/4:30AM EST/9:30AM GMT/10:30AM CET/8:30PM AEDT) until 9AM CST (7AM PST/10AM EST/3PM GMT/3PM CET/2AM AEDT)

All game servers, SWTOR.com, and the launcher will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than five and a half hours.

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Those Healers Need Protecting!

I spend most of my time in SWTOR PvPing these days and my main character is a Jedi Knight Guardian.  He's got a balanced tank heavy spec that is able to do some DPS as well but he's more than capable of holding a base or protecting a healer. The problem is, at least on my server, that we're seeing less and less healers wanting to heal. They are complaining that none of the tanks want to do their job. So where have all the tanks gone?

The majority of the Guardians in the guild that I am in are switching to what they call a LOL sweep spec. This spec allows them to do large amounts of damage to groups of people at once by completely specing into all the AOE sweep abilities. Unfortunately this prevents them from being able to be proficient guards and the healers die faster than they can heal. Due to the nature of the Guardian play style, in the past, the Gaurdians were the last true tanks that healers could rely on to protect them. Now that the LOL sweep spec has become popular though, healers are dying as soon as they engage in combat in PvP. Healers are now swapping to DPS spec so that they can last longer in PvP. As a result we are seeing greatly unbalanced teams - sometimes for the good - and sometimes for the bad. I was more than happy to get seven straight wins last night and it was obvious that our opposition was made up of an attempted LOL sweep team with no healers.

In a PvP team you would ideally have a balance of two tanks, two healers, four DPS. In SWTOR, as in other games, certain classes were designed originally to be better in certain roles, Guardian being a heavy armor spec and limited to melee range was far more effective taunting and guarding than attempting to do DPS. Unlike Powertech Bounty Hunters that could do a reasonable amount of ranged DPS and have a good amount of survivability the melee restriction of Guardians gave them a DPS disadvantage due to range restrictions. So Guardians were concentrating on getting their medals by guarding and intercepting and taunting. This has all changed with the LOL sweep spec. Now they are effective AOE damage BUT unfortunately they are ineffective at guarding, leaving healers wide open.

Should there be more awards for protecting and guarding and healing players? It is obvious that DPS classes have a distinct advantage for achieving high medal counts in PvP. Is it this advantage that is forcing tanks and healers away from their role? Do Bioware need to rethink the allocation of medals for both healers and tanks to make matches more balanced? Obviously, the balance needs to be precise, since matches made up of four tanks and four healers can take forever.

First Look at the New Planet Makeb Video and Pre Order Loot!

Today BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce that all players who pre-order Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ - Rise of the Hutt Cartel will receive an exclusive title and two new in-game items* once the Digital Expansion launches:

The Dr. Oggurobb Hutt Holostatue: Train under the illustrious Hutt scientist Dr. Oggurobb with this portable training device that he created in his own image.

"Scourge of the Hutts" Title: Republic and Imperial forces that adorn this title will be revered across the galaxy.

The Makrin Seedling Mini-Pet: Get your very own Makrin Seedling to follow you around and creep out your enemies! Possessing bark-like skin and grass-like nerve-rich tissues that blend in perfectly with Makeb’s environment, the Makrin Seedling has a distinguishing and eerie look!

And

Get your first look at the brand new planet Makeb featured in Rise of the Hutt Cartel and pre-order the Digital Expansion now to receive exclusive in-game rewards!

Gree: Will you sing for your Galactic Reputation?

With Patch 1.7 bringing Galactic Reputation into SWTOR, how will it change our play styles? 

If you have played any MMO you will know that reputation grinds can be both rewarding and monotonous  SWTOR has survived over a year of popular existence without it but now it's coming to the game. Could this be the missing elements for end game players? Have you found the daily quest rewards to be lackluster? How will this reputation grind change how we perceive end game?

From the screenshots of the preview of this new feature, it looks like we'll be provided with four unique reputations:
The Gree Enclave
Imperial First Mobile Fleet
Imperial Guard on Belsavis
The Voss

Now these may branch out to be six across your legacy because the Imperial and Republic are separate. It has not been made clear yet whether you will have separate reputation for your character's faction, even though reputation will be shared across your legacy.

Reputation has six unique levels which will (obviously) unlock new rewards as you level up. This will provide a unique way for subscribers to acquire cool new gear to brag about. But will Bioware make us sing for our rewards? How many months will it take to become a Legend and how awesome will the rewards actually be for our efforts?

I actually enjoyed reputation leveling in other games like WoW. It provided an extra level of achievement that you were rewarded with, apart from credits.BUT - the rewards can make or break the reputation grind. I can see reputation bonuses being a hot seller on the Cartel Market for people who prefer to hand over cash to speed up the grind.

What type of things do you want to see from your reputation and how long do you think it should take?