Story by Stephany Nunneley

SWTOR lead designer Daniel Erickson has said the team at BioWare has realized how large the PvP community is, so it has “turned a huge amount of resources” towards creating more content. He also told RPS that more team members have been assigned to create end game content as players are approaching the current cap faster than previously thought.

According to Erickson, more events like the Rakghoul Outbreak are also on the way. Like the Corrupted Blood Plague from World of Warcraft, the Rakghoul virus went from player-to-player providing not only a “mid-storyline surprise” for players, but a chance to explode as well.

“Part of the magic of doing something like this is that it feels organic and gives you a sense that the world is changing,” Erickson said. “A surprise you’re warned about ahead of time isn’t much of a surprise.”

“We definitely learned a lot of cautionary lessons [from World of Warcraft] about what to watch out for and protect against if you let your players loose with a contagion. We had a pretty good idea players would spread it no matter how hard we tried to stop them, so instead we encouraged it with rewards and quests and then ran every possible scenario we could think of to make sure it didn’t create any unintended consequences.

“There were two things we actively tried to encourage with the event, and those were community involvement in solving the mystery and free-roaming PVP on the PVP servers. Both were successes.”

Erickson said the team learned “two big lessons coming out of not just launch but beta testing,” when it came to development direction, one of which was not to underestimate the popularity of PvP among MMO players.

“Although we had not originally planned the game to be heavily PVP-focused, the ease of getting in and playing the Warzones combined with their fun design gave us the highest PvP participation of any modern triple-A MMO,” he said. “At that point we turned a huge amount of our resources to PVP development, but we’re still playing a bit of catch-up, and that is understandably frustrating to our most advanced PVP users.

“The second [lesson] was that the better your leveling content, the longer people would play in single sessions, and that when people are playing an average of five-or-six-hours-a-pop, they devour your content at an amazing pace. That meant moving more teams to end game content earlier than we had expected.”

Snipers and Gunslingers should be happy about the changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic this morning. Five of their most prominent abilities have received a 5% increase in damage output. With the latest patch 1.2.1, abilities like Snipe, Charged Burst, Aim Shot, and Ambush now have a measurable difference in damage output.

Although Snipers and Gunslingers were the only classes to receive a bonus to damage, many other minor and why-is-this-an-issue bugs have been fixed with the introduction of this patch. For instance, each player can add other players to his friends list even if those other players are offline. And that persistent and annoying jet-engine sound heard on Carrick and Vaiken station has been fixed.

On a sad note, the Rakghoul plague has come to and end (or is that good news?). Either way, the announcements on the stations have stopped, and the crash site has been fully cleaned up, including the jawa vendor. But chin up, event-fans: Lead Designer Daniel Erickson mentioned on Mos Eisley Radio that although BioWare does not have plans to revive this specific event, there is a whole team specifically dedicated to creating future live events.

According to the official Star Wars: The Old Republic Twitter feed, all servers will be offline until about 7 p.m. EDT following an emergency maintenance.

by Larry Everett

Yesterday, Update 1.2: Legacy dropped to live servers with next to no hiccups. Then this morning, BioWare brought down the servers for a very minor patch. In fact, the patch notes only contains two lines.

However, several players began stating that they were unable to access their characters when the servers were restored at about 9 a.m. EDT. Other players reported quest givers and even the new guild bank missing. Then at approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT, BioWare shut down the servers for emergency maintenance.

On the official website, BioWare explained the situation:

During last night's maintenance, some areas of the game were reverted to pre-Game Update 1.2 status. Some areas were 'missing' and characters that were in those areas would be unavailable. We took the live servers offline at approx 9:30AM CDT (Austin time).

Our server and deployment teams are now working to rebuild assets for the live servers, but this is unfortunately not a quick process. We currently estimate that our downtime could be up to eight hours, but that time may be extended.

Look for updates on this article if the maintenance time happens to be extended or if more information surfaces.

Earlier in the week we got a pretty good breakdown from the Star Wars the Old Republic team of the changes coming to the games crafting and gathering system with Game Update 1.2. Today we get a new Developer Dispatch video which give us all the juicy details and a look at the Legacy System. I thought the various gear and ship mailbox/GTN unlocks were neat, but the real awesome Legacy System aspects are with the Legacy Species and Ability aspects. After Game Update 1.2 players who hit level 50 with their main can then roll a new character on the opposite faction as the same species, as if the new character was your child. So now Sith Species will be showing up on the Republic side and vis versa.

Now the abilities unlocks are very similar and maybe even cooler. Lets say your main is a Sith, if you roll a child Bounty Hunter they can inherit the Sith parent’s force abilities. Obviously this will be limited so you won’t be able to be a Bounty Hunter with full fledge Sith abilities.

Bottom line is the Legacy system is going to be really interesting, check out the video.

The 1.2 patch is now on the test servers, so I will be taking a break from my Flashpoint tanking guides to discuss and theorise what these changes could and will do to Tanks in SWTOR.

Changes for the Jedi Knight

General

• Awe no longer costs Focus to activate.
• Dispatch can now be used on targets at or below 30% of maximum health (up from 20%).
• Force Kick no longer costs Focus to activate.
• Master Strike can no longer be interrupted.

Guardian Tree changes relating to Tanks

Defense

• Blade Barrier is now located in Tier 4 of the skill tree.
• Blade Storm no longer consumes stacks of Courage while the Momentum buff is active.
• Command no longer reduces the cooldown of Challenging Call and is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree.
• Dust Storm is now a 3-point skill that provides the same overall effect.
• Guardian Slash now generates 50% additional threat.
• Momentum is now a 2-point skill that provides the same overall effect.
• Pacification is now a 1-point skill with a slightly reduced overall effect.
• Shield Specialization is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree.
• Stasis Mastery is now located in Tier 4 of the skill tree.

Vigilance

• Commanding Awe is now located in Tier 5 of the skill tree. It increases the Guardian’s damage reduction while Focused Defense is active.
• Single Saber Mastery is no longer restricted to certain stances.
• Stagger is now located in Tier 1 of the Vigilance skill tree.
• Sundering Throw is now located in Tier 6 of the Vigilance skill tree.
• Zen Strike now generates 2 points of Focus when it is triggered.

If you’re a regular reader of Heavy Damage, you may remember this article where I talked about the build I use and builds I thought were worth taking a look at.  If you’re following my 18/23 build still (or any other Guardian build) this new patch has some changes that I hope will bring the Guardian back to par with the other two Tanks. Because let’s face it, they are somewhat lacking. Before the Guardians flame me for this observation I just want to say I play all three tanks, all three of my tanks are level 30-32 and it’s not that the Guardian can’t handle itself, it’s just a lot more work for the same outcome.

Now for the changes. Guardian Slash adding 50% more hate makes it a little more viable than the Overhead Slash trade off in the 18/23 build. I would say if you were following that build to take a step back and think of a respec. I will be republishing builds once the patch is in full effect and I have a chance to test all the changes. Blade Barricade is a skill I feel that the Guardian Tank cannot do without, so it being moved up a tier changes the 18/23 build even more to where I know I’ll have to respec.  Command no longer reducing the cooldown on Challenging Call seems like a nerf to a class that doesn’t need any of those, but we’ll see how things turn out.

Shadow

Not a lot of changes here. A few tweaks and cosmetic things:

• Mass Mind Control: Updated this tooltip to correctly state that the ability does not break Stealth. The ability’s functionality has not changed.
• Kinetic Combat
• Kinetic Ward’s appearance now refreshes properly when reapplied.
• Balance (Shadow)
• Force Synergy’s activation effects are now more visible.
• The Force in Balance no longer heals the caster if no targets are hit.

General Trooper changes:

• Full Auto’s attack animation now begins more quickly to improve reactiveness and faction balance.
• Mortar Volley’s animation has been updated. In addition, it now has a 5-meter radius to bring its range in line with other Trooper Area of Effect abilities and it now begins its damage sooner after activation.
• Vanguard
• Due to changes to the Vanguard skill trees, all Vanguards have had their skill points refunded.
• Fire Pulse’s visual effect more accurately represents its functionality.
• Riot Strike no longer costs Energy Cells.
• Animation timing issues with Energy Blast have been addressed.
• The hit timing delay on Explosive Surge has been improved.
• Shield Specialist

• Ceramic Plating: the Absorb amount gained from this skill has been slightly reduced.
• Counter Attack is now a 3-point skill.
• Energy Blast is no longer limited by the global cooldown. Its damage has been reduced by approximately 15%.
• Power Screen is a new 2-point skill that causes Ion Pulse and Energy Blast to build a stacking buff that increases shield absorption.
• Smoke Grenade is no longer limited by the global cooldown.

The changes to Vanguards don’t seem to be a nerf, which I feared was coming. Vanguard is in my opinion the most well-rounded and effective tank. I am hoping that the other classes get buffed to its level, not the other way around with nerfs for a class that plays like it should.

The most interesting change to me is the Power Screen ability. Ion Pulse and Energy Blast are two skills I feel like I border on over-using (Explosive Surge too) just because of the damage debuff it places on enemies. Now it has a shield buff it’s maybe the only skills you need. As with the Guardian, I will be republishing builds once I’ve had time to test out the changes. The comsetic and timing changes to the abilities will be welcome sights –  I’m glad they fixed the delay issue with Mortar Volley.

As always stay frosty, and my the force be with you!