The Old Republic - comic update

If you haven't seen this already, on the official SWTOR.com website, they have an online comic book which introduces the TOR story. If you're a comic book fan, or interested in what this world is going to be like, this is a must read. We're now up to issue 12, published late last week. Here's the link to the first page of the first edition.

The game itself is stylized and looks a lot like a comic book, so presenting the story in this fashion is a perfect way to get you into the feel of the world. This is probably one of the mistakes they made over at Star Wars Galaxies. When it first came out, the realistic looking characters were a real buzz to play with, they soon got dated and even updates to shadowing could not save the graphics from looking tired. The stylized universe presented in WoW takes on a different graphical challenge and it has held up to the test of time. Let's hope the graphics in TOR also endure.

Priest class left hanging with patch 3.2 changes?

If you look carefully at the patch 3.2 release notes you'll find a list of small changes, to spells. It seems that healers are getting a bit of the nerfbat, although shadow seems to be getting a bit of a boost. I would love to see shadow priests up there holding their own in DPS. Definitely much needed changes. Here they are:

Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.
Psychic Horror: This spell no longer has an invisible missile, so there is no travel time before the spell takes effect.

Talents
Discipline
Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.

Holy
Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target's armor.

Shadow
Dispersion: Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3 minutes.
Improved Mind Blast: Redesigned. Now, in addition to reducing the cooldown of your Mind Blast spell by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 seconds, while in Shadowform your Mind Blast also has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to reduce all healing done to the target by 20% for 10 seconds.
Vampiric Touch: The amount of damage done when this spell is dispelled has been doubled.

Let's hope that Blizzard finally release a Q&A for the class, however. Rogue and Priest are still left off the list! Has this got to do with priority, I mean Rogues and priests are the least common players in my guild!? I'd love to see more players in these classes though. Mmmmm ... stam buff.

Getting ready for patch 3.2

Blizzard have put together a great post, summarizing all the information you need to know about patch 3.2. The question is, how close is the patch release? The fact that they've summarized it now and that the patch on the PTR servers is classified as "retail" indicates that we may see it as soon as this week. Let's have a look at some of the juicy stuff you'll need to know:

Call of Crusade Q&A

Here you'll find a Q&A with Blizzard about details on the Isle of Conquest and Crusader's Colliseum.

If you've got any questions about how the classes will be affected by the patch, check out the Q&A series about the classes.

Unlike previous patches, the raid achievements for the Epic mount reward are not being removed with this patch. Glory of the Ulduar will still be available after patch 3.2 Here's the confirmation.

Instance locks are also set to change with the patch, "to allow players to progress through content at a pace more of their choosing". With four different styles of raids to choose from, ten man, ten man heroic, 25 man and 25 man heroic, one of the biggest problems we've found with our guild is that although we've got some members who would like to do the hard mode with some bosses, there are too many others that need loot from bosses deeper into the raid. The change will mean that you'll be able to farm easy modes of the instance and still go back and challenge yourself to the hard modes without affecting the easy modes. This is one of my favorite changes coming with the patch.

We warned you a couple of weeks back to stock up on badges. The Emblem system is changing and for all the details from Blizzard feast your eyes here.

There are more minor changes, like the Druid changes which we talked about on Druid Gaming Faces already. Get ready for some sexy cats!

For links to the official Blizzard word on these changes and others with patch 3.2, head on over to the main page of Worldofwarcraft.com today.

As a guild and raid leader, it's now my job to tweak our EPGP system and study the boss strategies before we make our first attempts in coming weeks. This is perfect timing for us, being a casual guild, as we've just got to the stage of farming Ulduar and sharding a lot of loot. It's going to be awesome to get into some new gear.

Q&A: Crusaders’ Coliseum and Isle of Conquest. A blue post at MMO Champ

"Q: What are the planned item levels for the gear that drops in each of the new Coliseum instances and how will the gear differentiate from one instance to another?

Development Team: Trial of the Champion will drop item level 200 and 213 items in the normal and Heroic modes respectively; Trial of the Crusader (10-player) will drop item level 232 items; Trial of the Grand Crusader (10-player) and Trial of the Crusader (25-player) will drop item level 245 items; Trial of the Grand Crusader (25-player) will drop item level 258 items. For those working through a tribute run, there might also just be a surprise or two in the chest at the end??? if you have what it takes to master this run. "

Other questions that are asked and answered were:

Q: Will there be any kind of reputation and titles associated with the Coliseum and will there be a 310% mount meta-achievement reward?

Q: How will achievements work for Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader, and will there be four different types of achievements to be completed?

Q: Do we have plans for the Argent Warhorses in Trial of the Champion to scale based on characters’ gear (similar to the Oculus and Ulduar vehicles)?

Q: Given that average match lengths continue to fluctuate on the test realms as adjustments are made to specific mechanics, what do you feel would be a satisfactory length for the average Isle of Conquest battle and why?

It's great stuff and a must read for any end game player! Read it all here: Live from MMO-Champion.

Warlock blog spotlight of the week

Almost Evil, Liquid Silver, is a pretty active blog. Hydra, posts almost every day. I like her writing style. She has a great sense of humor. The blog is not all heavy on stats and advice like a lot of WoW blogs, instead is more like a journal of things she has noticed both in and out of the game, relating to what it's like in general to be a geek and WoW player.

[Husband] I had a nightmare.
[Me] Oh, honey. What about?
[Husband] I was fishing for the four gold coins I was missing and I got three of them.
[Me] … *not seeing the nightmare*
[Husband] Then I woke up and realized I still needed all FOUR. *grumpy face*
[Me] *laughs hysterically* You know I have to blog about this right?
[Husband] Yes.

What a crack up! Her quick wit sure brings some light-hearted fun to our blog feed!

Sick of that chick on the ad

This may be a case of Friday-itis, you know, when it's come to the end of another long week and all you can do is whine and complain, but I am so sick of the ad that gets stuck on so many blogs, including this one, of the hot blond advertising EVONY. "Start your journey now, my Lord". I find it particularly ironic on this site, called Gaming Faces. I mean really, is that chick the face of a gamer? A gamer's fantasy more like it! I've been adding and cataloging blogs for Gaming Faces at night and I've found this ad, from Google, is pretty common and I'm sick of her cleavage popping up at me whenever a page loads!!! Sorry, as I say ... it's Friday. Come on five o'clock!

This is so Technorati can list this blog

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Druid blog spotlight of the week

4 Haelz, hosted on blogspot, has two authors, "Bell" Bellwether, a level 80 Druid on Dark Iron and Sannhet, also level 80, a Ret Paladin, Frost DK. The blog is pretty active, with at least one new post a week. Often times the news is about gameplay incidents in the guild or on the server the two authors play on, but there's also good information there for budding Druids. In a recent post titled Grilled and Humbled, Bell gives some insight into applying for the top Alliance guild on your server. The questions were apparently pretty rough! Turns out it was a learning curve for her:

All in all, it was very productive and eye-opening for me, but I feel I came up a bit short in some areas. I've adjusted some keybinds and done some more reading, and all I can hope is that I improve. Applicant status means my full induction into the raid group is shaky, and because of that I have to show constant improvement.

This is why these sort of blogs can be so useful to read: you can get great tips and learn from other people's mistakes and challenges. Keep it coming Bell!

Unreleased game footage!

It's great to see guild promos coming out for TOR already. This is the latest from tormentgaming.com and it uses game footage I haven't seen online before! Bad Sith, bad! The dark side is driving us to post this! Click on the read more link to see the video!

Torment SWTOR Teaser #1 from The Darkside on Vimeo.

Welcome SWTOR to Gaming Faces

Well, I thought I'd give you a little bit of a run-down about who I am. I'm an old Star Wars fan. I grew up with the toys. I married the love of my life, who I met at a Star Wars fan club. I have named two of my children after Star Wars characters (Mara and Teneniel). And I have the Rebel logo tatooed on my right arm. Yes, I am a Star Wars nut. I'm also an MMO addict. This addiction started because of Star Wars Galaxies.

I had no interest in MMOs prior to that but the lure of the Star Wars universe was too much for this Star Wars nut to resist. I played Star Wars Galaxies for almost five years. My first character was a beast master/bounty hunter who unlocked Jedi in the early days of the game. At the time that I unlocked my Jedi, there were only 21 Jedi on the whole server.

I was loyal. I played through all the changes to the system - the removal of force bars, the changing into the force ranking systems, xp loss from bounty hunter kills, temporary enemy flags from just pulling out your lightsaber - all the way through to the horrifying NGE (new game ehancements). The butchering of the game and universe and my hard work in the game got too much in the end and the lure of WoW proved to be more engaging.

Now, after three years in WoW, a new opportunity in Star Wars gaming is on the horizon. No one can deny that Knights of the Old Republic (KTOR by BioWare) was a brilliant game. Knowing that I'll be able to take that awesome experience and turn it into a MMO game, is envigorating! BioWare have excelled at everything they've done in previous projects and the videos and previews we're getting from their new venture into the Star Wars MMO field look to live up to and exceed what they've done in the past.

Four years ago I was fortunate to spend some time on the Sony booth at E3. I got the first videos of an up and coming event Sony were planning for Star Wars Galaxies. The same day, I heard a whisper from one of the Lucas Arts employees about a new Star Wars MMO game. There was concern expressed, off the record, about the damage that had been done by the recently released NGE. Those rumors are now reality and we're getting more and more information about this exciting looking new game from BioWare. We're going to try and keep up to date with all the latest breaking news and also provide a portal for any other bloggers wanting to talk about SWTOR.